


My Graceless Heart

by songofproserpine



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comfort/Angst, Drama & Romance, F/M, Mayfly/December Romance, Purple Prose, Secret Relationship, Soulmates, Surreal, Thriller, lana del rey and florence + the machine play muffled in the background
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2019-08-05 10:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 43,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16366163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songofproserpine/pseuds/songofproserpine
Summary: Lucifer knows your name. Like clay, he shapes you. Like air, he breathes you. Like wine, he tastes you. He whispers your name to himself, trapping it in his hands, feeling the warmth of your memory weave and warp through his fingers.---One exhausting night, you took a chance and prayed to a fallen angel for mercy. Much to your surprise, Lucifer answered it gladly, readily, neither of you really knowing why--and now he just can't leave you be.A reader insert, canon-divergent AU full of romantic tropes and drama and good ol' fashioned casual blasphemy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _“I’ve always said that Lucifer understands love better than anybody.”_ – Tori Amos.
> 
> \---
> 
> This is pure self-indulgence and I am not sorry. ♥

Lucifer’s Cage is an impossible space, coiled in the dark heart of Hell. The air inside is like a hook gnawing on lungs, pulling each deep, longing breath back into himself before it brings relief. He breathes anyway—he lives, he denies, he defies. The First Rebel will not be made to bow, not even to himself.

The devil is, among other things, a stubborn creature. Crafty, keen—a survivor. And like all survivors, he is always armed—knives out, mind sharp, vigilant and honed. This is not always to his credit; victims are made vicious, attacking even themselves.

It is cruel, not clever, to transform your heart from a shivering prey animal into a mouth of sharp teeth, all in the effort to guard yourself. It is cruelty calling itself kindness to thus protect oneself  _from_  yourself, killing what was once tender in you.

Soft hearts cannot endure long in jail cells. Prisons are always whole worlds unto themselves to those who stand captive within. The Cage—a crafty devise, positively panopticon to make Foucalt weep—feels at times as far from Hell as Heaven is wide. It stretches beyond that pale forbidding empyrean and its gleaming shadow like the darkly shining shores of an ancient sea, a place beyond time, a space that knows no how or where or when. There are other times the Cage sits suspended, like a carcass newly noosed, dangling above that open, black pit, knowing itself to be bait waiting to be bit.

To put it simply, Hell is like a mouth. Even the devil himself sits crouched inside, waiting for the teeth of bone and brimstone to bite down.

It isn’t always this awful. There are times he paces in a small, set length of his Cage with a loping grace—predatory, not state-of. These are the times he stares into that blank black gap open beneath him—endless, not empty—and can chase out that small thrill of fear before, traitor that it is, it can turn ruiner.

There are times he can laugh at his Cage no longer. These weak moments, raw and aching and loathsome, come more often than he would like. These are the times he can disguise the self-aimed cruelty as a kindness no more. These are the times when his heart hangs heavy in his chest, heavier than the bones of the earth. These are the times he stares into the devouring darkness with a gaze drowned in tears.

These are the times he thinks of you.

Lucifer knows your name. Like clay, he shapes you. Like air, he breathes you. Like wine, he tastes you. He whispers your name to himself, trapping it in his hands, feeling the warmth of your memory weave and warp through his fingers. Silken, soft—that’s what you are. That’s how you  _feel_.

He shuts his eyes and smiles that rare smile that so seldom trust as true—but not you, never you. The darkness in him hums at the thought of you. This time, when he breathes, the hook is gone, detached. His breath blooms free, first in his chest, then higher, fuller, filling his throat.

He whispers your name, feeds it to the abyss beneath him, and holds still. Watchful, patient. It won’t be long now. You always come when he calls, ever obedient. Or is it sweetness? He can never decide, and you never know quite what he wants to hear.

Still. Even so. Oh, how easy it is to need you. Too easy, as if longing were instinct.

It helped that you needed him first.

* * *

The first time you met Lucifer was in a dream.

You weren’t exactly a starry-eyed romantic. An occasional sappy daydreamer, sure, but when it came to grand romantic fantasies, you kept your brain on a short, overly rational leash.

Except, of course, when you were out of your mind with exhaustion and in dire need of a sympathetic ear, low, soothing voice, and strangely compelling masculine figure. Then all bets were off.

Still. Wanting never turned into having. You could—and sometimes, with all the thrill that casual blasphemy could provide— _wished_ that even the devil himself would take pity on you, tend to you with sincere concern. In fact, you wished for that right now as you sank low into your bed, trying to put the long, brutal day of a double shift behind you.

“If God won’t care about me, then let Lucifer do it,” you said.

You turned from one side of the bed to the lonely, cold other, watching the march of moonlight as it stretched across your room, barely illuminating your bed. Specks of dust fluttered like faded embers in the air. You traced them with your eyes, creating constellations.

A low throb of pain raced up your back, making you groan. You’d been on your feet all day—work, as always, was merciless and borderline unbearable. You shut your eyes, tucked your sleep-heavy sigh into your heart, and slowly let your hand slip off the bed.

Something warm and strong met your fingertips. You sat up, too startled to scream. That same something squeezed your fingers, holding on tight.

It was a man, both familiar and new. Pale blue eyes, sandy blond hair dimming like dying embers. He looked older than you, clearly, though his face was the kind that had a peculiar agelessness to its every line. He wasn’t old, not exactly. He was  _always_ , a child of antiquity.

“Who are you?” you asked, staring at his hand on yours. Three of his fingers all but circled all of yours.

The man gave your hand a little shake, a proper, polite, almost gentlemanly greeting. “Lucifer,” he said simply. For a moment, something tightens in his expression, almost as if he tenses against the truth.

“Oh. Okay.” You paused.

The man—Lucifer—dropped your hand. You lowered it back to the bed and used it as leverage to sit up.

“I think I made you up inside my head,” you said.

His pale eyes gleamed bright, like little chips of ice turned silvery in the dream’s moonlight. “That’s your opening line?” he scoffed. “You’re goin’ with Sylvia Plath?”

You tugged down your sleeves, hiding your wrists. A nervous habit, a comforting gesture. With an obvious effort, you tore your eyes from his face and peered around. You were still in your bedroom, a narrow little space tucked away from the weariness and frustrations of the world—family, a job, the looming horrors of an uncaring world.

“Why are you here?” you asked, not answering his own question.

“You invited me,” he said. Again, his face went on its guard. And again, just as quickly, the tension was gone again. “Don’t you remember?”

You frowned. You  _couldn’t_  remember. “All I remember is getting home from work and falling right into bed,” you said.

Lucifer’s smirk was a sickle. The charm of it cut across the shadow in the room, making you shiver. “I know,” he said slowly. “I heard you.”

“How?” you asked at once. “And why me?”

“Why  _not_  you?” he fired back.

There was something peculiar about his question. The words came fast, breezing from his lips as if he studied this conversation, pored over it like a creature clutches his precious gold. But how could he know what you were going to say before you even knew it yourself?

“Kinda not surprised you’re having a little trouble here. Memory’s a funny thing,” he continued, reading your expression with the ease of browsing his favorite book. “Especially yours—not you, specifically. Humans in general, but also you especially.”

You tried to find the kindness in that statement. “Are you insulting me?” you asked, barely laughing. “This is all in  _my_  head, and I dream up a guy to insult me.” You shook your head. “God, that’s sad.”

Lucifer’s mouth pursed briefly at the name. “Dad’s got nothing to do with it,” he said, and you fell privately silent, amazed at the almost innocence of the word.  _Dad_ , not  _Father._  As if there were still some affection there, more habit than heartfelt. “This is between you and me.” He drew a line in the air as he said it, pointing back and forth, uniting you, tying you.

You watched his hand stir the shadows and the moonlight. They both seemed to bend at his touch, as if he could command the dark to gleam brightly.

“And so what if it’s a dream?” he pressed on. “Doesn’t make it any less real, does it?”

“Why are you  _here_?” you asked again, your voice strained, thin.

Lucifer heard the plea lurking beneath the tone. He shrugged, crossed his arms—it’s only then you realized  _how_  large his arms are, as if his body strained from the greater presence within him. “I had time to kill—I’ve got nothing  _but_  time to kill, honestly. And you know, a little company never killed anyone. Curiosity might, sure, but that’s not the end of that saying.” He raised his finger into the air, like a professor at a lecture. “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back.”

You watched as Lucifer steeped his fingers and studied you, his eyes tracing your expression. “And you needed me. You called for me, asked for me. Can’t crucify me for wanting to know why.”

“… I did?”

“Don’t you trust me?” he asked, his eyebrows darting up.

You paused. “Guess I should,” you decided, trying to smile. “I mean, if I can’t trust my own imagination, who  _can_ I trust?”

Lucifer narrowed his eyes. This, it seemed, was the wrong thing to say. His disappointment was like a ripple in a once peaceful pool of water. “Listen to me, and listen close,” he said, his tone leaving no room for questioning. “Are you listening?”

“Yes,” you said, the word as bitter as a lemon.

He placed his hands on his chest. “I’m real, all right?” he said. His gaze dipped to your hand again, and he reached forward, tapping your knuckles.

You sat up straight. You  _felt_  that, felt  _him_.

But why were you surprised? Didn’t he hold your hand earlier? Didn’t he squeeze it, give it a friendly shake?

You didn’t often dream. When you did, they were seldom this real, this vivid, this eager to be felt and knew and  _true._ So this had to be something more, something strange and undeniable. Easier to call it a dream than dig deeper.

“You’re real,” he continued, grinning at your reaction. He pulled back and waved his hand around. “ _This_ is real. And you know, not to dwell on this one point, but there’s not much hope for a conversation unless we can get past that little speedbump.”

The casual irreverence of his tone didn’t fool you. He might sound dismissive, but it was clear he was eager for something that only you could offer to him.

“Why’s it so important for you to talk to me?” you asked.

“Are you fishing for a compliment?” he asked. When he saw your scowl—not angry, no, but hurt and trying not to be—he allowed himself one moment of repentant silence before he changed tack. “Well if you find it so hard to accept, then we could do something else.”

You were almost afraid to ask what.

He smiled. “Guess we could go for a round of Cemetery.”

“ _What_?” Well  _that_ wasn’t what you expected.

“You know—sit in silence. Play dead. First one to move loses.”

You couldn’t help but laugh. “Did  _you_  come up with that game?”

Lucifer crossed his arms again. “Like I said—I’ve got time to kill.”

“And I’m guessing not a lot of people to kill it with,” you said, speaking before you knew the words were there.

His smile was faint, more pinned on then true. “Is this your idea of sweet talkin’ me?”

“Did you  _want_  me to flirt with you?”

“We’re talking about  _you_  here.”

“And I’m talking about  _you_ ,” you fired back. “See? That’s how conversations work.”

He huffed. “All right—no games. No chit chat, either.”

“So… what should we do instead?”

This time, when he smiled, it was wide and crafty. He didn’t show his teeth, but you still felt as if you’d seen a wolf grin. “You tell me.”

Your heart slammed up against your ribs, your pulse suddenly uneven. Uh oh. That grin was as enticing as it was terrifying.

Bolting up in bed, your eyes scanned the darkness behind him, catching on the edge of your bookshelf. “Read to me,” you said.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard. Read to me.” You paused. “Please?”

Lucifer’s expression softened a little at the word  _please._ You wondered how often he heard it—wondered again how often he heard it without tears and hysterical screams attached.

With that bitter dark thought in mind, you carefully drew your legs up, knees bent. You watched as Lucifer took a half step over to the bookshelf and plucked the largest one free from its fellows. “This’ll do?” he asked, showing you the cover.

Despite the shadows of your thoughts, you smiled. “Yeah—how’d you know?”

He didn’t answer. You would have asked again, if he hadn’t then decided to sit on the edge of your bed, leaning back on his elbow. The bed groaned under the added weight.

Lucifer flipped through the pages, one eyebrow arched high. He peered at you askance, clearly amused. “C’mon, you’re a big girl, I’m sure you already know how to read.”

“You wanted to spend some time together, so…” you waved your hand and shrugged. “This is my idea. Take it or leave it.”

You regretted the ultimatum the instant it left your mouth. He  _could_ leave—easily, gladly. You still didn’t quite understand what was even keeping him here, apart from idle curiosity and some need to be entertained.

Why all this? What does he want—what does he  _gain_? “Call me an egomaniac, but… it’s nice to be wanted. Nice to feel  _needed_ , you know?”

“So this is all for yourself.” You tried not to be too hurt by that. Dream or reality or feverish hallucination from being overworked—whatever the hell this was, you didn’t expect it to be so…  _this_.

“Don’t act like you don’t get something out of this, too.”

“Yeah, evidently.” You gestured down the length of his body, eyebrows raised, laughter bubbling in your chest. Hearing his own laughter rumble against your ear, you chewed on the inside of your cheek and counted back from three. “Although would it kill you to wear a sweater?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re  _freezing_ ,” you said, throwing in an exaggerated shiver for full effect. Teeth chattering, shoulders trembling, you shimmied a little further back, retreating into what little empty space the now crowded bed allowed.

The rumble of Lucifer’s laughter stopped, replaced instead with a low grunt. “Noted,” he said, in a tone that made you think he would also promptly ignore your complaint.

He curled his fingers around your shoulder and drew you closer, moving slowly, allowing you to resist if you wanted. Of course, you didn’t—didn’t resist, nor did you want to; you were all too happy to settle against his side once more.

“Tired yet?”

You shook your head. Slowly, uncertainly, you slid your right hand over his chest and rested your head against it. “Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m sore all over,” you groaned.

He paused, taking this in. “Where specifically?” he asked, curious.

“My back—lower back. Thighs, knees.” You frowned. “I can’t feel my left foot and I’m pretty sure all of my toes are numb.”

“What a breakable little thing you are,” he mused.

“I’m not  _broken_ ,” you argued. “I’m just… dented, I guess.”

“Turn over,” he said.

You whipped your head up just in time to see him flash a wink and a grin. “Why?”

“Because I’m gonna help you.”

You tilted your head. “Why?”

Lucifer held up his free hand. “Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’ll be on my best behavior, scout’s honor.”

“You were never a boy scout.”

“No but I always liked the scarves.” He gestured to his throat. “Yellow’d look good on me. Bring out my eyes.”

A nervous laugh bubbled out of your mouth before you could tug it back down.

A warm expression settled across his face as he listened to your laugh. It was that look, more than any of his words, that relaxed your nerves.

“Fine,” you said, shifting away and turning your back to him. After a moment, you chewed your lip and settled onto your stomach, folding your arms under your head to use as a makeshift pillow.

For a long, almost agonizing moment, Lucifer did not move, nor did he say anything. Then, gently, more gentle than you expected, he ran his fingers along the back of your neck, brushing your hair away from your skin. His touch circled the top part of your spine, then shifted slowly in long, graceful circles down between your shoulder blades. Once he reached the middle of your back, he cleared his throat.

“Tell me where it hurts,” he said.

You held your breath. His fingers were cold, but not unpleasantly so. It helped that he touched you with a sort of tender fascination—as if you were something to study and he hadn’t quite decided just what he wanted to learn.

Once his fingers skimmed below your ribs, you winced. “There?” he asked.

You nodded.

“Hold still.”

“Time to play Cemetery,” you joked.

“I’m serious,” he said, though his voice didn’t sound any note above playful.

Lucifer held his fingers against the little throb of pain in your back. He pressed down once, like a doctor testing a sprained ankle. You prepared to wince from another burst of pain—but the pain never came. What came instead was the gentle rush of relief. It flowed down your back, over your thighs, through your knees. Your feet flexed with a sudden rictus of movement—and the numbness was gone.

“How did you do that?” you whispered, turning over your shoulder to face him.

You felt Lucifer’s fingers flutter against your back, keeping you from turning to face him entirely. “Magic touch,” he said, his voice half a singsong.

You laughed. “Fine, don’t answer.”

He held his hand against your back as if to steady himself. “I just did.”

A moment passed, long and weighty. Neither of you moved— _you_  certainly didn’t want to—and for the first time since the dream began, you felt… truly at peace. No doubts, no confusion, no anxious curiosity. Just comfort.

And you had the devil to thank for it.

“So. You gonna read to me or what?” you asked.

“Well aren’t you needy?” Lucifer  _tsk_ ed. “Guess I am. What did you have in mind?”

“Robert Frost.”

“Robert  _Frost?_ ” he repeated, clearly amused. “You sure you wouldn’t rather something else?” he asked, crossing his ankles. “No  _Fleur du Mal_ , or a Shakespeare sonnet?”

Shifting until you were on your back again, you flashed him a wide grin and shook your head. “Nope.”

“What about some William Blake?” he continued, propping the battered poetry book against his stomach. He reached around your chest to thumb through the pages, scanning each one briefly. “ _Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ ,  _Songs of Innocence…_  No?”

Again, you shook your head, your eyes on the book he held. It was a favorite of yours, a long-loved, often-read compilation of poems you’d found at a yard sale some years back. Whoever had owned the book before had taken the time to highlight, underline, and even analyze some poems, but the only one that was left completely pristine was by Robert Frost.

When Lucifer landed on the poem you wanted, you quickly pulled your hand free and flattened it on the page. “This one. Please.”

“’ _Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening_?’” You could  _hear_ him make a face. “Weren’t you just complaining about being cold?”

“Sure was.” You tapped the page. “Now get to readin’.”

He waited for you to settle down again before he responded to your request. “ _Whose woods these are I think I know_ ,” he began, his voice a little creaky as he discovered the poem’s rhythm. “ _His house is in the village though_ —whose house?”

You chewed on your lip to hide your grin. “I don’t think it matters.”

“Well how can he know the woods belong to some guy if he doesn’t even know the man’s name?”

Your grin quickly turned into quiet laughter. “Shut up and keep reading.”

He scoffed. “You wanna try that sentence again?”

“No.”

Lucifer chuckled, low, quiet. “Okay then,” he said, and focused on the poem once more.

Once he started reading again, it didn’t take Lucifer long to find the melody of the poem. He stopped rushing through the words, started lingering on their sounds, and pausing for a few beats more, as if he were listening to your breath in between each intake of his own. You savored the sound of his voice, even though a little voice inside your head began to question the absurdity of it all—the Adversary of humanity, reading you  _poetry_?

Well, the prince of darkness was said to be a gentleman—why couldn’t he be a well read one at that?

You shut your eyes. He had a strong, clear voice, one that was easy to listen to, one that could soothe and entice in equal turns. You could hear the bells of the horse’s harness, could feel the chill wisps of snowflakes as they twisted through the wind. How easily did his voice paint the image of the dark woods, so deep and lovely; it came to life in your mind in a way that the poem had never lived before.

You trembled again, this time not with cold but with a deeper thrill you found hard to describe. However much it defied words, however much it filled your head with doubt, it still demanded to be felt.

“ _The woods are lovely,_ ” he continued, lingering on the word  _lovely_ , as if it were a fruit to savor. You could easily imagine the way his lips shaped the word, and once  _that_ thought entered your mind, you found it just a bit too difficult to listen to the poem anymore. “ _Lovely,”_ he said again, “ _Dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep._ ”

Lucifer paused. The silence stretched, languid, like a cat settling into sleep.

“ _And miles to go before I sleep,_ ” you said, your voice hushed.

“ _And miles to go before I sleep,_ ” he added, his voice alarmingly soft.

You sighed. “Read it again.”

“Liked it, did ya?”

A little hum left your mouth as you leaned your head against his chest again. His laughter was short, brief, and didn’t distract you from the slow weight of his arm as he wound it around your shoulder and pulled you closer. You moved to accommodate his surprising, but not unwelcome, sideways embrace, shifting as close as you could without climbing right on top of him.

“Well, settle on in,” he said, his lips in your hair, not quite a kiss but something close to it. And you did just as he told you, happy to be obedient, as he began to read the poem again. It wasn’t long before his voice lulled you into the deep and lovely dark of sleep.

* * *

When you woke in the morning, alone but not lonely, you took a moment to bask in the warm light of the growing dawn. Your body, once so heavy with the aches and pains of a long work day, now felt… rested, content. With a squeak, you let out a yawn and stretched your arms over your head, rolling towards the other side of the bed.

A book slid off your bed and clattered to the floor. Something skittered free from one of the pages—a scrap of paper torn from a notebook.

Frowning, you reached down off your bed and snatched up the paper. It was folded once in an uneven crease. The writing on the page was crisp, fluid, the ink glittering like starlit wings.

 

> _Next time,_ I _get to choose the poem, and_ you  _get to read._
> 
> -   _L._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just some soft(TM) domesticity, a game of truth or dare, and slow lingering kisses with the Archfiend.
> 
> also i'm playing fast and loose with canon because i don't care and honestly, Supernatural's storylines are,,,,,,,,, spotty at best. *makes a vague gesture at the idea of a plotline* i'm making it up as i go along so please enjoy the ride.

The week following your dream-that-wasn’t-a-dream about the devil went about as well as it could, considering how it got started.

 _Could_ you call it a miracle, if it involved a fallen angel? Were miracles only applicable to terribly wondrous acts of heaven? You hadn't the slightest idea.

Too bad you weren’t religious—which was the first time in your life you had wished that you belonged to any faith. Although even if you were a penitent woman, you doubted that any learned holy man would have an answer to this question—nor did you think he would let you walk away without a one-way trip to the nearest psych ward if you tried to explain _why_ you were asking.

“I made some offhanded comment-slash-prayer that if God wasn’t going to help me, then let the devil look after me instead, and it turns out he took me seriously and we spent a night together reading poetry and snarking at each other.” Sometimes you had to say it all out loud—not quite in those same words—just to make sure that it was a memory of actual events that happened. But no matter how many times you said it or thought of it, or _remembered_ that night, with alarmingly fond clarity, it all sounded absurd, even to you.

With all this swirling in your mind, on the Wednesday of that same week, you made an executive decision: all you could do was keep busy. You were gonna work hard, sleep late, and get up to do it all over again.

This resolution was easy to stick to, even if it had a few unexpected casualties. The morning after this promise, a nasty wave of the flu cleaved a path through your coworkers, forcing you to pick up double shifts in addition to your own. This was a decision made less out of compassion and slightly more out of a desperate desire not to hear the poor bastards retch into the phone as they begged you for a favor.

The trouble with work, apart from everything, was the way it wore your body down. All the aches and pains that Lucifer’s curiously soothing touch had chased away came back with a vengeance within a few hours of your first double shift. Like all pain, it demanded not just to be felt, but to be _endured._

As the days continued, your body continued its silent, seething protest. Every step you took shot through you like an arrow, rattling your teeth in your jaw, making it ache. Every smile, every raised hand, every twist and turn, all of it wore your body down. You felt like frayed thread, strained thin and pushed far past its limit.

 _Maybe Lucifer was right,_ you thought as you hobbled off to your long overdue, and far too short, fifteen-minute break. _Maybe I_ am _breakable._

And just like that, your determination _not_ to think of Lucifer—or his voice, or his frustrating charms, or his hands, which, despite their chill, were pleasantly… large and soothing—only turned into an excuse _to_ think of him. You almost wanted to call your mind a traitor, if you weren’t caught up in the logic loop irony of your brain condemning itself as a Judas.

Maybe this was his doing; maybe _he_ deserved the blame instead of your poor brain. Maybe his one visit left an impression on your psyche as certainly as a brand burned into flesh.

“That’s a whole lot of guesswork,” you sighed, climbing into your car and starting it up. You cranked the heat and settled back into your seat. “Whole lotta maybes, no definitelys.”

Somehow you doubted you were ever likely to come to a clear, satisfying answer, as far as anything involving Lucifer was concerned. He _was_ called the master of torture, after all. And what would torment an anxiety-prone woman more than never having a proper explanation to what happened to her? What better torture was there for you then the continuing proof of a chaotic world unconcerned with justifying or even explaining its terrifying randomness? What better way to get under your skin than to make you constantly want to claw your way out of it?

Far, far away—further than you could ever imagine or properly appreciate—after much focused effort and careful concentration, Lucifer finally found your voice in the endless roar of sound and fury that was the known universe. Your thoughts came to him like a song played muted through the static and hiss of a poorly turned radio.

He caught the faintest whisper of your bitter thoughts, and, upon hearing them, his expression soon soured to match. Eventually, he managed to laugh. It was a short, clunky sound, more resigned than truly amused.

He wasn’t hurt. No, no. He wasn’t even disappointed. Of course not.

Of course.

 

Not.

 

* * *

 

Was it just your imagination, or were customers starting to look at you funny lately? It wasn’t even just the customers who were doing this—random people in public were now catching your attention and eyeing you askance around their coffee cups and cigarettes. Their expressions were always the same: sharp, viciously curious, as if they were seconds away from shouting you into an argument.

But that wasn’t even the strangest part of your week, not by a long shot. As if that weren’t bad enough, on Saturday, your one day off and your one hope of actually relaxing, you were cornered by a short, dark-haired woman on the street.

“Gotta hand it to ya, meat sack,” she said, grinning in a monstrous leer, “you’ve got a lot of guts to talk to our father one on one. Too bad he’ll probably get bored and feed them to you.”

It was this woman’s sudden presence, more than the vicious, violent thing she said, that stunned you into silence. When you did find your voice, it was too late to talk to her—or demand that she explain herself. She had vanished, quite literally, as if she was never there at all. The only evidence you had of her were the flutters of nausea that twisted in your stomach.

“What the hell was that about?” you asked, your eyes not to the sky, which was the usual destination for desperate prayers, but focused on the ground. The cracks in the pavement seemed to ooze with a deeper dark, as if they heard your words and fed on them, devoured them gladly, greedily.

You drove home in a daze, only to turn right back around and get what you needed from the store in the first place. That woman had thrown you off your guard entirely.

On your second drive back home, you replayed her words in your head once more.

 _Our father._ Who could she mean? You talked to a lot of people face to face every day, so many that they started to blur together. And what about that threat? You’d dealt with more than a disgruntled customers  at your job, sometimes more than you could count on one hand in a single day. But you’d never been threatened quite like this.

Should you call the cops? “No,” you said out loud, pulling into your driveway. What could _they_ do to help you? Without any more information besides what she said and a vague description of what she looked like, all they could do was tell you to be careful, and let them know if she showed up again.

Still distracted, and even more shaken than before, you hoisted your shopping bag over your shoulder and shoved your car door shut with your hip. You marched up your front steps and pushed your way through the door—only to come to a sudden stop.

There was someone in your house.

You looked up, startled. “Jesus!”

Lucifer was already smiling. “Not quite.”

You shook your head and took a few angry sips from your iced coffee. “What are you _doing_ here?” you asked.

“Answering your question,” he said. “Well, your call. _Well_ ,” he added, correcting himself again, “your call that came in the form of a question.” He tilted his head and crossed his arms, wearing a look of barely polite amusement. “You just live to complicate things, don’t you?”

“I didn’t call you,” you said. “How could I? It’s not like you’ve got a phone.”

“Sure you did,” he argued, unfazed. “Just a few minutes ago.”

You stirred your drink, rattling the ice against the plastic cup. “I thought I could only see you when I was dreaming. Isn't that what you asid?”

"Not that again." Lucifer heaved a long-suffering, and clearly exaggerated, sigh. “Look, it’s really simple. You weren’t dreaming—you weren’t _yet_ dreaming. Got it?”

“I’m a novice when it comes to weird shit, okay?” you grumbled. Your arm was starting to grow numb from your bag, so you set it down on the ground with a hard thump. “Hi, by the way.”

“Hi.” Lucifer snatched up the bag by its handles, clearly curious about its obvious weight.

You ducked your head to hide your smile. His curiosity was far more endearing than it ought to be, given your mood and his lackluster people skills.

 _Don’t you dare find him charming,_ you scolded yourself. _Don’t you damn dare._

You brushed past your unexpected guest and marched into the kitchen. “And I _still_ didn’t call for you,” you said, throwing the words over your shoulder.

“Yes you diiiid,” he replied in stage whisper, his drawing out the words in a mocking singsong tone.

If he wanted to play petty, then you could, too. “Nope,” you said, smacking your lip on the word.

“Could’ve sworn you did,” he said, unmoved.

This simple answer sent your thoughts racing. And who, exactly, would the devil swear to? Who would listen to any promise he had to make, and who would hold him to it?

As these questions pressed in close, demanding your attention, you watched as Lucifer reached into the canvas bag and scooped out a pumpkin, balancing it in the palm of his hand. He stared at it.

“You’re gonna eat this?” he asked, looking strangely impressed.

“No,” you said, holding back a laugh. You gave his hand an appreciate glance before you set your iced coffee down. “I’m going to decorate it.”

“How and why?” he asked, with a tone that suggested he was suddenly doubtful of your sanity. At least now you’d be on the same page, doubting yourself together.

“Easily,” you said, taking out the second pumpkin from the bag and setting it down on the counter.

Lucifer listened as you quickly walked him through your yearly Halloween ritual of carving pumpkins to set on your front step. You were halfway through describing all the other decorations you would soon put up—a graveyard on the front lawn, cobwebs strewn over the shrubs, bat and ghost stickers in the windows—before he interrupted you, clearly having heard enough.

“So let me get this straight,” he said, eyebrows raised, pale eyes glinting as you held up your carving knife, “You buy an over-sized gourd, scoop out its guts, and then carve a face into it just for fun?”

“Yep,” you said, tapping your knife against the pumpkin’s stem. “Sometimes I’ll save the seeds and eat them later, too.”

“That’s… almost impressively vile.”

You shrugged, not caring enough to take offense. “I’m sure you’ve seen worse stuff in Hell,” you countered.

“Well aren’t you just a nice little ball of sunshine.”

“And it’s not like I’m the only one who does this,” you argued, compelled to defend yourself. “It’s a pretty long-standing tradition. Celtic, I think.”

Lucifer watched as you sank the knife into the top of the first pumpkin and quickly cut off its stem. You held out your hand and gestured to the bowl of large utensils positioned near your stove.

“Spoon,” you said, with all the prompt precision of a surgeon asking for a scalpel.

“No, that’s your hand,” he said, looking at it.

You wiggled your fingers. “Get me a spoon. Please.”

“And why can’t you do it?”

Without taking your eyes off Lucifer’s face—it was an easy face to look at, if he stayed quiet—you reached into the pumpkin with your free hand and began to tug out the seeds by the fistful. The resulting sound, a series of wet pops and thick squelches, made him scowl.

“Oh come _on_ ,” you said, rolling your eyes. “I’m sure your home is a lot grosser than this.”

He finally did as you asked, if only to get away from you for a moment. You took the spoon as he handed it to you. “Thanks. And hey, speaking of—just be glad you weren’t here for any holiday dinners.”

“Is that a roundabout way of disinviting me?” he asked, his voice flat. “Because I gotta say, it’d make a lot more sense if you just didn’t bring it up at all.”

“No, I’m not _not_ inviting you—and I’m not _in_ viting you either, don’t get any ideas—”

“Sounds like you’re the one with the idea.”

“Shut up,” you said, angrily shoving the spoon into the pumpkin and scooping out another large heap of seeds. “I _meant_ that if you can’t handle this—”

“Who says I can’t handle it?”

You closed your eyes, counted back from six, and turned to look at him. He was grinning. “Are you trying to be difficult?”

“Yes.”

“Well… stop. I’ve had a crazy week and I’m really not in the mood right now.”

Neither of you spoke for a few moments. The silence weighed heavily on your shoulders, making you tense. Your gaze darted around the room as you tried valiantly not to look at Lucifer—who was watching you with a deliberately unnerving focus. He knew _exactly_ what he was doing, not to mention what he was doing to _you_.

Lucifer clearly needed a distraction, if only to stop distracting _you_ , which, considering you had a knife in your hand, was probably dangerous. You sank your free hand into the pocket of your coat, pulled out your phone, and passed it to him.

“Here,” you said. “Kill some time and look up pumpkin carving if you’re so curious.”

He frowned at your phone which, despite being six inches long, could easily hide in his hand. “And why would I do that?” he asked.

“Like I said—it’d kill some time.”

“And why would knowing more about something change my opinion on it?” he asked, although he was already tapping away at your screen, acting with all the ease of a man—or, well, angel—who had worked more than a few smartphones before.

As you wondered what kind of service they got down in Hell, you shrugged out of your pea coat and tossed it over the counter. It slid half off the stool that sat on the other side, plastic buttons clattering against the wood. “Sometimes knowing more about something can make it less…” you trailed off, searching for the word.

“Less what?” he asked.

You could feel his gaze on you. Lucifer’s attention was as heavy as a stone, but not unpleasant. _Intimidating_ , you thought, and then quickly brushed the word aside. _Impossible. Anxiety-inducing. Possibly traumatizing._ “Less strange,” you said at last, settling on the politest understatement you could make without straying into an outright lie.

After a moment, Lucifer shrugged and began to pace in long, slow strides around the kitchen. He made a half circle at your back, moving from one side of the room to the other, leaning against any surface he could find. “And what exactly should I be looking up?” he asked. “Pumpkin massacres?”

“Pumpkin _carving_ ," you correct. "That or jack-o-lanterns.”

“Jack?” he repeated.

You looked up, alarmed at the vulnerable tone in his voice. His expression wore the shroud of a briefly passing shadow, as if he stood in the shade of a great, dark wing.

You stared at him, waiting for his pale eyes to regain their usual bright, impish glean. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Lucifer set your phone down on the stove with a hard slap.

“Hey,” you cried, frowning. "Be careful. That was expensive."

“What? It’s not on,” he argued, gesturing to the burners.

Turning your head to hide your exasperated eye roll, you sank your carving knife into the pumpkin's front and gently cut out a little triangle. “Well if you think _I’m_ breakable, you should see how easy those things crack if you drop them.” You blinked and spun around, knife raised. “That wasn’t a suggestion, by the way!”

Lucifer raised his eyebrows at your knife, and then raised them even higher when you plucked the piece of pumpkin off the tip and threw it across the room into the sink. “You really need to relax,” he said.

Whatever strange shadow had passed over him just moments ago now cleared completely. He was back to his usual self, half charm, half snark, all impossibility.

It was this return to form that gave you the courage to lower yourself to his childish level. You stuck out your tongue. “Don’t tell me how to live.”

He shrugged, leaning his hands on the counter behind him. “So then live differently,” he said.

“Like you wouldn’t have anything to say about _that_ either.”

“You can buy my silence anytime.”

You said nothing, giving him your silence for free, an obvious slight. Judging by his crooked grin, bright expression, and his icy eyes that shined like a pale fire with no heat, he didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, he almost looked proud of you.

He watched you work with reluctant interest. It wasn’t until you finished carving up your pumpkin and stepped outside to set it on the stairs did you remember something important.

“Did you hear what that woman said to me?” you asked, turning to face Lucifer.

“What woman?”

You weren’t fooled. “You did hear her, didn’t you? You were listening. You heard her threatened me, and you heard me pray for an answer.” As your heart gave an uneven gallop, you kept your eyes pinned onto his expression, looking for any slight change. “That's why you're here, isn't it?”

“From what I heard, she seemed to be congratulating you,” Lucifer said, clearly unwilling to speak at all.

Nervous laughter bubbled out of your lips. “She called me _meat sack_.”

The look Lucifer gave you was almost pitying. “Well… not to kick you when you’re down, but it’s _technically_ true,” he said, eyeing you up and down. Then he did it again, taking his time.

You gestured wildly to his body. “And so are you!”

“Also only technically.”

“She also called you father.”

Lucifer’s face went very still. “That might technically be true, too.”

“So she’s… what, a demon?”

Lucifer’s silence was somehow worse than any answer. It was a credit to your patience that you did not start screaming hysterically.

You sighed instead. None of the tension left your body. You felt heavy, so heavy, and suddenly tired enough to drop on your lawn and sleep in the cool autumn sun. Instead, you sat down on the bottom step and buried your face in your hands.

“I can’t believe this,” you groaned, your words muted by your hands.

“Seems like you can.”

“Then I don’t _want_ to believe this.”

Silence. After a moment, the front door hissed open and shut. You dropped your hands and turned to look behind you, puzzled. Lucifer was gone, but only briefly. He soon returned, knife in one hand, your second pumpkin in the other, wearing a wicked little smile on his face.

You eyed the knife, saying nothing.

You watched as, against all expectation, he began to carve the pumpkin too. First, he pried off the stem, and then set it down on your knee where it wobbled, delicately balanced. Then, he started to scoop out the seeds. He whistled while he worked, though you didn’t recognize the song, and only received an enigmatic answer when you asked about it.

“It’s an old one. The oldest. Older than you’ll ever be.” He turned the knife around until he was holding the blade, tapping the handle against your shoulder. “Music was the first common tongue of all creation,” he said. “Quite frankly, I’m shocked you ever learned how to do it.”

“Me?”

“Not you personally. You…” he gestured with the knife. “You ubiquitous. You humanity.”

Before you could reply, Lucifer began to sing once more, effectively shutting you up without needing to say a word. You fell silent again, listening to the song with renewed interest. It was strange, almost haunting. You couldn’t explain it—could hardly understand it—but the song carried with it the feeling of cold, iron gray days, an aching, echoing loneliness, and something stubborn, persistent, as defiant as a heartbeat in a wounded chest.

You focused on this last part—the persistence, the defiance—until your own heart gradually eased out of its earlier, frantic rhythm. All the tension in your body crept quietly away, as soothing as Lucifer's touch had been.

You tilted your head from side to side, popping the bones in your neck. Listening to his voice felt… good. Strangely good, considering it came from the devil and all. But even the devil had once been an angel—was, perhaps, technically an angel still—and you supposed a few of the earlier traits still carried over past his Fall. He had, after all, worked some similar sort of strange magic earlier that week, pulling the pain and tension from your body with a few careful, controlled sweeps of his fingers. So why wouldn’t his voice have that kind of power, too?

Unaware of your reaction, or perhaps being uncharacteristically gracious and ignoring it, Lucifer soon gave up on whistling and fell back on a sort of toneless hum. He tossed the pumpkin seeds and other almost-viscera out onto your lawn as he worked, his leather jacket creaking with the sudden gestures. A few crows began to circle overhead, squawking curiously. Then, only when he noticed your keen attention, Lucifer’s song gradually grew into a quiet melody. He sang under his breath, wordless but clear. It was lovely, and most certainly sad, but there was a beauty to it all the same, almost unbearably so. More than once you turned your head away from him and thumbed a tear out of your eye before it could fall.

He continued to sing as the minutes passed, sometimes pausing to listen to the imitation of a mockingbird in one of the trees nearby. When the bird’s song stumbled, he cleared his throat and started again, clearly guiding the creature as best he could. He carved the pumpkin while he worked, twisting it in his lap, holding it steady in his free hand.

Eventually, much to your dismay, Lucifer’s song finally came to a close. The silence that followed was heavy with old thoughts haunted by unspoken words.

“Thank you,” you said, your voice thin. It crept fearfully out of your throat, as if it were terrified to follow the still fading beauty of his song.

“What for?” he asked, frowning as he peered at his work. He was clearly distracted, and you said nothing else until he set the knife down on the stairs next to him.

“Lemme see.” You leaned back. After a moment, you frowned. “What am I looking at?”

“An Enochian sigil,” he said, setting the pumpkin down on the stair just above yours. He stood up, peering down at you with a gaze that was somehow both wicked and wary. “ _Now_ you can thank me,” he said, tapping the toe of his boot against his jack-o-lantern.

“Why?” you asked, shielding your eyes from the sun.

“You’ll know why in a few days,” he said.

When it became clear you would get no other answer besides that, you picked up the carving knife, stood up, and pinned a smile to your face. “Well… consider this my thanks in the meantime,” you said, reaching past him to open the door.

A strong gust of wind pressed on your back with a shove as sudden and demanding as a pair of hands. You stumbled forward, catching yourself on the door. When you looked up, Lucifer was gone.

You waited, wishing, but not with hope, that this was his own little trick, something to make you laugh, or even just to amuse himself again. But the minutes passed, and your unexpected guest did not return. Soon you had no choice but to go back inside, gnawing on the inside of your cheek to hold back your disappointment. 

* * *

 

You didn’t see Lucifer again until the following Saturday night. You also didn’t see that woman—no, that _demon_ —again, either. That was comforting. Maybe Lucifer had taken her aside and given her a talking to. He was her father, after all. And demon or no, walking up to a stranger on the street and cheerily hinting that she might get eviscerated seemed a bit beyond the pale, even for hellspawn.

Even the customers were on their best behavior that week, all smiles and easy, breezy small talk. You didn't have to pick up any extra shifts at work, and all the sidelong glares that strangers sent your way were as gone as quickly as they'd appeared.

That couldn't be Lucifer's doing either, could it? Maybe your tentative peace had something to do with that sigil, that Enochian thing.

 _“You’ll know why in a few days.”_ You replayed Lucifer’s answer in your head once again as you headed to the bathroom and prepared a bath. Steam rose up in pale whirls, spiraling to the ceiling and splaying out over the bathroom mirror, creating a light gray haze. You ran your fingers over the glass, trying to redraw that strange sigil from memory. Unsurprisingly, you failed. It didn’t look anything like what Lucifer had made. You quickly smeared the sigil away, watching as your reflection gradually emerged in the misty glass.

A burst of wind howled loudly outside, twisting and warping around your house. You heard the windows rattle in their frame and then just as quickly fall still again, almost as if the world’s shortest earthquake had just come and gone.

Once the bath was ready, you quickly undressed and sank into the water, eager for warmth and comfort. It helped take your mind off the new series of questions that circled your head, all of them centered once again around Lucifer. Just what the hell was an Enochian sigil, anyway? And why had he vanished so quickly, without a word of warning, without even a taunt in place of a farewell?

And then of course was the one question that loomed above all: _how and why was the devil visiting you in the first place?_ Little though you know of Christian folklore, you were under the impression that he was pretty much bound to hell, only able to exert a few influences here and here on Earth in the form of plagues and temptation and sin, or whatever it was those fundamentalists believed.

You pinched the bridge of your nose and sighed. This was all just… it was too much. Dreams about him you could understand. Visions of the devil, who was, to your quiet delight, frustratingly handsome, seemed far more appropriate at nighttime than during the day. But him popping up in your house, making small chat, carving pumpkins, and probably protecting you from his ill-tempered family members? And as if that weren't impossible enough, he'd actually spent time with you like—well, like you were friends? Singing to you? Actually _singing_ , revealing to you a song as old as every atom of his being, a song older than the earth you lived on?

You scowled as you stretched your legs out in the water. “He’s not a vampire,” you scolded yourself. “And his name _means_ light bringer. Doubt he minds the sun that much.” You paused, considering this. “He probably likes the sunlight,” you said, discovering the truth as you spoke it. “Can’t imagine he gets to look at it much from where he usually is.”

You snatched up the little plastic wrapped bath bomb, unpeeled it, and let it sink into the water. Pale gold and violet suds simmered into the water, blanketing your legs and hips in a warm haze. As you watched the water shift and bend into these new colors, something else clicked into place in your head. “Oh, duh,” you said, shaking your head. “He’s the goddamn morning star, you idiot.”

“That actually refers to Venus,” you heard Lucifer’s voice say from the hall outside your bathroom door. “Not the sun.”

 _Oh shit._ You shrank into the water until your entire body was completely submerged. “When did you get here?” you asked, raising your voice so he could hear you over the bathroom fan. “How long were you listening?”

“Not that long,” he said, lumping both replies into one.

You chewed on your lip, still unsure. After a moment, you straightened up and pulled the shower curtain aside to get a clear look into the room. The door was open, just as you’d left it, and you could see the faint curve of Lucifer’s shadow on the wall opposite. You watched the shadow shift as he adjusted his position, leaning his shoulder into the wall. As he moved, you glanced over to the pile of clothes strewn on the floor—more specifically, to your most ridiculous pair of frilly pink panties, which were only worn when the more practical ones were in the wash.

_For the love of God, don't look in here._

“Relax,” Lucifer said, in a tone that seemed designed to irritate you further. “You were already in there when I showed up.”

Oh, was he a mind reader now? “How did—are you inside my head?”

“I’m just browsing,” he said, with infuriating ease. “You’ve got a lot of static up there, sure, but every now and then something comes through.”

Uh oh. You pulled the curtain shut again and squeezed your eyes shut tight. “Like what?” you asked, pressing your free hand to your face. Warm water slid down your wrist. “Give me an example.”

He laughed at you. “It’s _your_ mind,” he said. “Shouldn’t you know already?”

“Just shut up and answer me.”

Instead, he said nothing.

As you waited, silently hoping he wouldn’t actually answer, you sank into the gold and violet streaked water, leaving only your mouth and nose above the surface. You could agonize in silence all you pleased, but there was still no sense letting a nice bath go to waste. In your humble opinion, the holy trifecta of comfort were over-sized sweaters, large mugs of coffee, and scathingly hot baths on cold days. The bath slightly edged out the others in significance, especially since it had the added bonus of soothing your sore back.

You shut your eyes, took in a deep breath, and pressed your head to the bottom of the tub. For a moment, all you heard was the small change in pressure as your ears adjusted to the slow rush of water. Then, gently, you tilted your head back and forth, fanning your hair out in a corona around your face. A low, hushed sound followed your every movement as the water sloshed up against the sides of the tub, not quite soothing, but still better than the silence. This sound was soon joined by another, a deep, slow thump from somewhere nearby—more specifically, somewhere _outside_ the bathroom.

Footsteps.

You darted up, the water sliding off your body with a cry like cut glass. Your shower curtain was mostly opaque, and stretched from one side of the tub to the other, but you could just make out the blur of Lucifer’s body as he approached. He was wearing that red leather jacket again—it stood out stark like a wound against his crisp, pale white shirt—with jeans as dark as an ink stain. Judging by the heavy tread of his steps, he had to be wearing boots again, too. You sent another desperate prayer to heaven that he would step over your clothes without comment.

Maybe heaven heard you—or, more likely, Lucifer did—because he said nothing as he took a seat on the bathroom rug, his back graciously turned to you.

“Do you _really_ wanna know?” he continued, as if an interval of several minutes’ silence did not pass between what you said and his belated reply.

“Yes,” you said. _I think so_ , you thought instead.

“There’s a lot of whining about the weather and bad customers and dry skin.” He shrugged, his leather jacket creaking with the movement. “Every now and then some concern pops up for your parents, which is a nice change of pace. A dutiful daughter bound by loyalty and all that. Still sounds like whining from where I’m sitting, but at least you’re doing it for someone else.”

You rolled your eyes. “Anything else?” you asked.

“You think about my hands a lot,” he added. You could almost _hear_ the grin he was no doubt wearing. He continued, his tone torn between proud preening and teasing. “They’re so _big_ and _soft_ —”

“And cold,” you cut in, before his ego could swell up any larger than it already was.

“You warmed up to ‘em pretty quick,” he said. He leaned back, the shower curtain crinkling under his weight. “Look, you can deny it all you want, but we both know the truth: you liked it, and you want me to do it again.”

A little shiver passed through you, from nerves and not from fear. “Whatever helps you sleep better at night,” you grumbled. Then you frowned, thinking. “ _Is_ there a night in Hell? Or is it always just dark and starless with the occasional burst of light from the brimstone?”

“Are you asking me to take you back to my place?” he asked, his voice soft and silvery.

You shrugged. “Not really. Wouldn’t want to run into any more of your disgruntled children.”

“Any _more_?” Lucifer repeated, turning to peer over his shoulder. “Who else have you met?” All traces of charm and teasing had fled his voice, leaving his words stripped raw and bare.

You stared at the warped profile of his face. “No one,” you said, wishing you had a clear view of his expression. “Just the one I told you about.”

The silence that passed between you was tense, coiled like a fist with the knuckles straining against the skin. Then, finally, Lucifer shrugged and turned to face front again. “Oh, that’s right. Meg. I’d say she’s sorry, but she’s not.”

“Oh. Okay?”

“That didn’t sound like a thank you.”

“That's because it wasn’t.”

He shrugged again. “Would you rather I lie? Would that make you feel better?”

“Not if I _knew_ it wasn’t true.”

“I don’t have any reason to lie to you,” Lucifer continued, and you could hear the effort it cost to admit this. “I could come up with a few reasons, sure, but it’s not worth the effort. You have to keep track of all your lies, but if you tell the truth, then you don’t have to remember anything.”

As he spoke, you carefully, quietly, pulled the shower curtain aside just wide enough for your arm to slip through. “You know what I think?” you asked, tilting your head so you could get a clear view of the devil’s head.

 _Don’t think about his hair_ , you demanded quietly. _Or about how it’s a sandy silvery blonde and is just long enough to grab._

Lucifer laughed. “Uh, sort of? Isn’t that the whole point of this conversation?”

“ _I_ think you’re lonely. You’re lonely and you need company, so you show up every now and then to argue with me.”

“I’m not—I’m not _lonely_.” He spat out the word as if it were a cherry pit.

Resting one arm on the side of the tub, you leaned forward until you could prop your chin on your hand. “I think you are,” you continued. “Why else would you be here without an excuse?”

“I don’t give excuses.”

“Liar,” you said, though there was no heat or anger in the word. Just hurt, for him and for you. “I didn’t pray for you today. Didn’t call for you, either. You came here because you needed the company.”

“I don’t _need_ anything.”

“So what do you _want_?”

Judging by his silence, and the way his broad shoulders tensed like a coil waiting to spring, Lucifer was just as surprised at your question as you were.

“Nothing,” he eventually said, his voice oddly flat. “Nothing and no one.”

“You’re a liar,” you said again. There was a strange thrill in saying the word. It crawled soft and silken from your throat, spilling out into the small space separating your lips from the devil’s ear.

Slowly, hoping that he wouldn’t hear, you dipped your free hand into the bath and scooped up a palmful of water. If he didn’t move—and if _you_ moved fast enough—you could dump it over his head within seconds.

Before you could blink, Lucifer’s hand darted out, closing his long, cool fingers against your palm. Within seconds, his skin warmed to yours.

“And _you_ ,” he said, turning to face you, “aren’t subtle.”

“How’d you know?” you asked, your gaze locked on his face.

He shot you an exasperated look. “I _listen_ ,” he said, eyeing your slightly guilty expression. “And just a little word from the wise—”

“Isn’t it ‘to the wise’?”

“—This is pretty cheap as far as pranks go.” He raised his eyebrows and gave your hand a little shake.

“Well, you caught me, so… no harm, no foul.”

You waited for Lucifer to let go of your hand. He didn’t. Instead, he ran his thumb along the base of your palm, tracing lazy circles down to your wrist, trading your warmth for his chill.

“You sound like my brother,” he said, his eyes on your hand, keeping track of the little patterns he idly drew into your skin. “Well, _one_ of my brothers. Gabriel. He’s a little toll bridge troll, a real button pusher, you know? Likes to think he’s some kind trickster god in his spare time, but I know better. And everything he knows is all owed to me—not that he’d ever own up to it, of course. Being stubborn sort of runs in the family.”

Lucifer paused, his pale eyes dipping to your mouth. “What’s that look for?”

“What look?” you asked, your voice strained.

“That smile—well, I think it’s a smile. It’s all…” he trailed off, tilting his head as he tried to make sense of you. “All twisty and sad.”

“I’m not sad,” you lied. “I’m just… surprised, I guess.”

“About?”

“You. I didn’t… I dunno, I didn’t think you’d want to talk about your family.” Your hand twitched in his grasp, but you didn’t pull away. “You don’t really say much about yourself.”

“Now that’s just not true,” he argued, though it was all bluster and noise, clearly a deflection. He held his free hand to his heart. “I happen to be my favorite subject.”

You laughed. You couldn’t help it. That joy quickly faded, however, when Lucifer let go of your hand and steadied it instead on the edge of the tub.

“Gonna call me a liar for that, too?” he asked, dipping his head so that he could stare at you from under his brow.

You shook your head, brushing a strand of slightly damp hair off your forehead as it slipped out of place. “I’ve got a better idea,” you said.

“I’m all ears,” he said, cupping his hand around his left ear.

You chewed on your lip to keep from laughing again. “We could just play truth or dare,” you said, shrugging. “Either that or two truths and a lie. The truth’s gonna be involved no matter what, which is the important thing.”

Lucifer frowned. “And why would I want to do either of those things?”

“Because you like talking about yourself,” you said, shrugging again. The bath water rippled with your movement and you noticed, and quickly filed away for later gloating, how his eyes made a quick, curiously appreciative, pass over your bare chest.

Lucifer considered your proposition for a moment. Then, he held out his hand. “Deal.”

You shook it. “Deal,” you said. Then, before you let go of his hand, you asked: “Truth or dare?”

“Truth,” he said with a grin, pulling his hand free.

“Why did you flinch the other day when I said jack-o-lantern?” you asked. “Do you not like them or something? Is there some kinda backstory there that I don’t know about? Because when I looked it up, all I could find was this story about a man named Jack making a deal with the devil and being cursed with immortality.”

Lucifer’s smile dropped off his face with an almost comical quickness. You didn’t dare laugh, though. “I didn’t flinch.”

“Ask something else.”

“But—?”

“Ask. Something else.”

There was no room in his tone for further discussion. “Fine,” you said, crossing your arms over your chest and leaning back against the side of the tub opposite from him. “What I said earlier, about you being lonely and needing company?” You waited for him to nod before you continued. “I was right, wasn’t I?”

“I’ll give you partial credit for that one,” Lucifer said, though of course he wouldn’t tell you _which_ part earned you credit. “Now it’s my turn. Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

“You miss me when I’m gone, don’t you?”

The water sloshed around your ribs as you shifted in the tub. “Sort of,” you said. You couldn’t bring yourself to look at him. “I mean, look—you leave a pretty lasting impression, so I’ve been thinking about you a lot, right?”

“Evidently.”

“Well, thinking about someone a lot means they’re always on your mind, right? And if they’re always on your mind, then that doesn’t give you much time to miss them.”

“Semantics,” he said, shrugging off your explanation as if it were as light as smoke. “You still miss me, though. Don’t you? Say it."

“Yeah.” The word came out sharp and broken. You cleared your throat and tried again. “Yeah, I miss you.” _God help me, I like being with you._

Some of the tension in Lucifer’s expression slid away, leaving behind a look that wasn’t quite pleased, but sort of… wistful.

“Dare,” he said, his voice low.

You frowned. “I didn’t ask you yet.”

“Dare,” he said again, his mouth shaping the word as if it were a kiss.

Maybe that’s why you said what you said next. Lucifer had a funny way of making you impulsive, in thoughts as well as words.

“I dare you to kiss me.”

You thanked every star in the sky that Lucifer did not laugh right in your face. You did, however, chew angrily on the inside of your cheek when he stared at you for a long, frozen moment, as if waiting for the punchline of a joke.

“Why should I?” he asked.

Something twisted low in your belly. You’d felt this before; the low, agonizing gnaw of shame. “Because you picked dare,” you said, feeling foolish. “So… so that’s my dare. Kiss me.”

Lucifer’s gaze flickered to your mouth. He said nothing. He _did_ nothing, either.

A small flame of anger swelled up in your chest, lashing your throat like the crack of a whip. “Or you could just sit there eyeing my tits and not give me anything back for the view,” you snapped. “Which, hey, _you’re welcome_ , by the way,” you added, gesturing to your chest.

This little outburst of yours earned you a wide, appropriately devilish, grin. He leaned forward, lips parted, eyes bright with a dark gleam. “Nervous?”

“No.” You weren’t nervous at all. You weren’t scared, either. Fear was the furthest thing from what you felt in that moment.

Lucifer’s grin faded into a crooked smile. He raised his hand and curled his fingers under your chin, tilting your head back so that your mouth was almost even with his.

“’ _Reach, then, and freely taste_?’” he murmured.

 _Holy hell, how does he_ do _that?_ Only the devil could find a way to make Milton sound seductive. “Are you gonna do it or not?” you asked, squirming impatiently.

“ _Now_ who’s needy?” he mused, his lips grazing yours with every word he spoke.

And then, slowly, as if your anticipation were something he much preferred to savor than your satisfaction, Lucifer finally took you up on your dare and gave you a kiss.

It was… Well, it wasn’t what you expected. For one thing you weren’t struck dead by a righteous bolt from heaven, so that was nice. It was also a little awkward at first, and you had the distinct impression that this was something he _really_ didn’t think he’d ever have to do. Maybe he didn't even  _want_ to, but his pride made it damned near impossible for him to ever back down from a challenge.

You tensed up at the thought, your anger fading fast under a new wave of regret. Well, you’d asked for this—the least you could do was be a good sport and see it through all the way to its awkward end.

Only it didn’t end. The first kiss was a stilted thing, but when you turned your head to the side to break it, Lucifer did something quite unexpected: he followed you, turning his head so that he could refit his lips around yours.

This second kiss was shorter than the first, but far nicer, less forced. Three more kisses followed, and the two of you finally found a comfortable rhythm, a give and a take that wasn’t so much a dance as it was a contest. Each time you drew back, thinking he’d had enough, he proved you wrong and pressed forward, until all that stopped him from being in the tub with you was the tub itself.

You trembled at the thought of being so close to him again, which only made him smile. You retaliated by steadying one hand on his shoulder and passing the other through his hair until you had a firm grip on the back of his head. You tugged once, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to be felt.

You were really starting to enjoy this. Lucifer’s kiss had the chill of winter woven through it, quickly warmed by your breath. When you shivered, it wasn’t from cold, but from a curious sort of burn, the kind that kindled nerves and turned wanting into needing.

You frowned.  _Need._ What an ugly word. You didn’t  _want_ to need anything. That, at least, was something you and Lucifer could agree on. Needing made you weak and clingy, made you _vulnerable._ But this was a petulant thought, as stubborn as a child stomping foot or their first rebellious word.

Your scowl did not go unnoticed. Lucifer’s lips stumbled around the sudden downward twist of your own, breaking the pace you two had struggled to set. He breathed out in a small huff, as if he could sense your revulsion but didn’t know its cause.

A pang of shame shot through your heart. You kissed him again as penance, greedy with the need you didn’t want to feel. This kiss was a lingering thing, brimming with a tender viciousness that he easily returned. You shivered again, this time from a dark, aching delight as he matched and surpassed your kisses with ease, giving back his own with almost loving cruelty.

Lucifer held your neck between his hands, rubbing his fingers back and forth, warming them by drawing your blood to the surface. You let out a sharp gasp, and you felt him laugh against your mouth before he slid his touch to your face, framing it, holding you still.

Gently, giving him enough room to deny you, you slid the tip of your tongue over his lips. He let out a low growl, an involuntary sound.

If you didn't know any better, you'd say he was actually _enjoying_ this. Surprising, that. Especially since he was only doing this on a dare.

Tragically, the next time you leaned away from his mouth, he did not follow. You closed your eyes, savoring the feel of his touch—that odd mix of chill and warmth, one borrowed from you, the other all that he could _give_ to you.

 _Say something._ Well, what _could_ you say at a time like this? _“Thanks for that, it’s been years since anyone’s touched me”?_ No, that wasn’t something you wanted to admit—especially not when you were sitting naked in front of him. He might get the wrong impression. _“I kinda expected you to have a forked tongue”?_ No, that wasn’t right, either. The last thing you wanted was to think about his tongue—or his mouth, or his kisses, or the rest of his body that was still perilously close.

As you sat there, struggling with what to say and fighting against all you _wanted_ to say, you heard the wind howl outside again. The windows rattled once more, the glass straining against the frame. You jumped as you heard it crack.

Lucifer lifted his hands off your face; the absence of his touch stung worse than any wound. You heard him swear under his breath as the rattling continued, the wind rising now to an almost hurricane howl.

“Don’t you dare,” you heard him growl, and for the first time since you’d heard the devil speak, you now could fully and freely believe that he was a creature to fear. “Not here, not now.”

And then, just as suddenly as it began, the wind stopped.

You opened your eyes.

Lucifer was gone, with only your kiss-bruised lips and hammering heart to remember him by, and no amount of praying or pleading to the empty sky could bring him back.


	3. Chapter 3

The rest of October passed with ruthless precision. You kept track of the days, marking them on your desktop calendar in thick, red Xs.

Two weeks passed, and Lucifer did not return. Not in a dream, neither waking nor sleeping. You watched the pumpkin he’d carved slowly start to rot, sinking into itself like your deflated hopes. Only the strange carving he'd made in it stayed unmarred, even as the rest of it withered and turned a sickly brown.

"I _have_ to look that up," you said to yourself more than once, each time you passed by the jack-o-lanterns on your front step. The symbol looked like something out of a horror game about cults, but you found it difficult to believe that Lucifer had either the time or the interest in such things. You  _would_ just ask him yourself, but he was keeping his distance these days.

Something was keeping him from you. Of that you had no doubt—well, just one doubt. For all you knew he was tired of you. Maybe he’d found something else to occupy his time; the ruler of Hell had to have _some_ responsibilities on his plate, after all. But each time this vicious little thought inched its way into your head, you stomped it like a worm under your heel.

You replayed his last visit in your head over and over again—it was a frequent comforting daydream, as well as the prelude to your recent dreams. Vividly, with a little shiver of fear, you remembered the sound of the wind howling around your house. The first time you’d heard it, Lucifer appeared, almost as if the wind announced his arrival. But then you’d heard it again before he left.

No, not left. He was _taken_. He’d sworn under his breath, had even growled like a cornered animal.

Was it just a coincidence, or was the wind a sign of something else?

No answer came, no matter how hard you prayed. Lucifer’s silence stung worse than any wound. Maybe he _was_ ignoring you, then. Maybe you really were nothing but a passing thrill, a temporary fascination for a creature constantly craving temptation and trickery.

By the time Halloween arrived, all traces of summer had well and truly fled. The temperature maintained a constant presence at "sweater-friendly," and each day dawned with a steady, chilling wind and a sun that offered more light than heat. You tried to enjoy the change in seasons—autumn was your favorite time of year, after all—but it was hard to shift your thoughts around the mystery of Lucifer’s absence.

You _missed_ him. That, you couldn’t deny. And though you kept up a steady chatter with your friends online, and the few coworkers you liked, the conversations fell flat, and their company barely satisfied. 

* * *

 

It wasn’t by his own will that Lucifer stayed away from you. Through all the long years—eons and ages beyond counting—he clutched at any and all ways to make his brief escape from the Cage, so how and why would his time with you be any different?

Each time he found a way to freedom, however brief that freedom was, was a moment of triumph and fury. He was never free for long. Being public enemy number one in Heaven did have its consequences, after all, though his carelessness never did him any favors. It was just so damned hard _not_ to throw his hard-won freedom back in their faces, pointlessly destructive as taking a hammer to a wall of glass just to watch it shatter.

If you knew the truth of this, you might have delicately pointed out to Lucifer that he should have learned by now to be cautious and careful. And _if_ you said such a thing to him, he would no doubt have pointed out how hurt is a hard habit to unlearn, especially when the wound is kept open, gaping wide--and maybe you could help with that.

Maybe you, impossible little thing that you were, were brave and reckless enough to try.

And _if_ you were so brave and bold, _if_ you did so dare, then he would reward you the best way he knew how: with himself. Together you would make Hell your home and haven, the hearth that warmed your heart.

Lucifer had this conversation with you in his head more than once after your first prayer. It became a habit, really--an addiction, truth by told. But old habits die hard, and all the long eons of having to defend himself soon soured the honey of these fantasies. Even the memory of you was a monumental effort, one that required the ancient strength embedded into the brutal glory of his being. Relentlessly, with the ruthless efficiency of desperation, he pored over the thought of you. The shape of your eyes, the little twist of your lips as you tried not to laugh. The sound of your voice, the length and rush of your every breath.

Lucifer remembered your every word, cherished every thump of your pulse and hushed sigh. He counted them the way a Catholic clutched a rosary, whispering _aves_ over each bead. If he was beyond all salvation, then let him at least savor you--you, his breath of life, his dream of freedom.

You and  _only_ you, you precious, terrible thing.

* * *

 

After two days of calling in sick to work—your “sickness” being nothing more than a numb tingling in your legs from all the double shifts you pulled—you returned to work on Halloween with a faint limp and a hopeful heart. You liked keeping yourself busy, liked the routine and discipline of it. It was hard for you not only to _justify_ doing nothing, even on your days off, but also to figure out _how_ to do nothing.

Despite the holiday, you weren’t allowed to wear an actual costume. The most you managed to sneak in around your uniform shirt was a black dress, its white collar as crisp and pristine as a fresh sheet of snow, thick black knee socks, and braid your hair into two matching plaits. The only flourish you added to the look was black matte lipstick for dramatic effect. This was the one day of the year you could look weird and not care about it. Why _shouldn’t_ you go all out?

You were just printing out a new nametag for yourself— _Wednesday Addams,_ on account of the costume and all—when your manager pulled you aside for a brief chat.

And brief it was. You had barely said four words to her before your manager cut in.

“As you know, we’re in recovery mode around here after the franchise deal fell through,” she said, moving her hands back and forth as if you needed a visual for the chaos. She spoke with all the precision of someone who had practiced this speech more than once. “And though it pains me to say it, considering your recent performance, I’m afraid we’ll have to let you go.”

You stared blankly into your manager’s face, waiting for her to crack a smile.

You waited in vain. No smile came. Certainly no joke, either.

Curling your hands into fists to hide the tremor in your fingertips, you counted back from six in your head and took a breath. “Just like that?”

She nodded, her expression almost sympathetic. “I’m afraid so.”

You went over the conversation in your head. Nothing in your manager’s explanation pointed out a specific incident that led her to this decision. You might not be the _perfect_ employee, but you certainly weren’t a bad one. You showed up on time, you completed every task assigned to you down to the letter with no corner cut and nothing left for someone else to finish. Hell, you’d singlehandedly help run the place when the flu ran rampant among your coworkers this past month.

 

“Can we at least talk about this?” you asked, your throat tightening around the words. _Don’t you cry,_ you hissed quietly at yourself. _Don’t you dare cry._

She shook her head. “I don’t see what else there is to discuss. And I know this is sudden, but our decision is final.”

 _Our_ decision. You clenched your teeth to keep from laughing. As if she wasn’t the one in charge of all the decisions around here. As if it wasn’t _her_ idea—and ultimately her mistake—that put the store in this failed franchise mess in the first place.

“I also feel compelled to mention that you have a habit of shirking our dress code,” she added, with a pointed look at your braids, black lipstick, and nametag. “We have an image to maintain, you know.”

If this were a TV show, this would be the moment when the camera pulled out to reveal the shelves of whiskey, gin, and wine. It might also focus on the name of the store—Brie’s Booze—before swinging back to your manager and her grave solemnity.

You stared at her, unable to hide your confusion any longer. An involuntary laugh bubbled in your throat. You always laughed when you were nervous, which, considering your current situation, wasn’t doing you any favors. “But… we’re a liquor store.”

Your manager—who was _not_ the eponymous Brie—folded her fingers together and kept the first two straight. “And it’s comments like _that_ which convince me I made the right choice,” she said, pointing at you.

“I’m sorry.”

“I appreciate that. And please know that you can rely on me as a suitable reference in the future.”

 _Suitable_. That didn’t sound too promising.

You nodded, pressing your nails hard enough into your palms to leave crescents. As you turned to go, your manager reached out to tap you on the arm.

“Um, are you leaving?”

“Yeah…?” you replied, eyebrows raised. “You fired me, so I thought…”

“You still have to finish today’s shift,” she said with a scowl. “We’re one person short; Matt called out.”

“Oh. Okay.” The lie slipped out involuntarily. _Nothing_ about this was okay, but all the words you wanted to say to her, and all the ways you could describe just how far and beyond okay this entire situation was, failed to find a way to your lips.

All through your shift, you tried to smile as best you could. You failed more often than you liked. It was hard to chase away the desire to fall right through the ground and have the earth swallow you whole. It wasn’t so much a wish to escape like Alice, down the endless rabbit hole into a land of adventure, but more a Persephonic pipedream. You’d never before thought that Persephone was an actual person, but Lucifer’s arrival in your life, and his offhanded references to other angels, made you reconsider the notion.

If one legend could be true, could it _all_ be true? Every god, every angel, every devil and heavenly power—did they all really exist? Could they find you, too?

Your thoughts turned to Persephone constantly during your last shift at the store; you worried over her like turning a stone in your hand, over and over, often putting yourself in her place. The earth had swallowed her head to toe, snatching her into the darkness she would soon learn to love and call home. But had she craved it before, as you were now? Had she ever prayed for it, yearned for the sheltering, soothing dark?

As you headed out to your car, fighting back tears that were determined to break free, you stared at the cracks in the pavement, wishing they would yawn open wide and devour you. You shivered with barely contained dark delight. How nice it would be to fall like that, to scream yourself raw for the thrill and terror of flying in reverse, right down into Hell.

And where would you land? Who would be waiting for you in the blackest, deepest pit of Heaven’s mirror? Who would help you back to your feet?

You unlocked your car door and slid inside, suppressing another shiver. You knew the answer, knew it was well as your own name.

Who else would help you but Lucifer himself?

 

The tears you’d been fighting through your whole shift finally broke out on the drive back home. You turned on the radio, blasting the volume as loud as you could stand it, hoping to drown out your miserable hiccups.

 _“God, sometimes You just don’ t come through,”_ Tori Amos sang with her softly bitter blasphemy.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” you laughed, turning onto your block.

“And that’s why I’m the right man for the job,” a familiar said, his voice strong and clear.

You flattened your foot on the brake, your chest jolting forward with the sudden stop. “Lucifer.”

He gestured to his body with a flourish. “In the flesh,” he mused.

You eased off the brake and continued down your block, eager to get home. “I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon,” you said, your voice low. “You didn’t answer any of my... calls.”

Lucifer leaned forward and turned the radio down. “I was busy,” he said, and did not elaborate.

You frowned and turned the radio back up, letting the song fill up the silence. Tori Amos’s voice swept through the clutter of your thoughts. _“Why do you always go when the wind blows?”_ she sighed.

“With what?” you eventually asked, chewing on the corner of your lip. You could ask that, right? You two were friends—weren’t you? “Or am I better off not knowing how the devil spends his days?”

You meant it as a joke, but it didn’t seem to stick the landing. Lucifer stretched out his legs as much as your front seat would allow. He folded his hands low on his stomach and turned his head away from you.

“You’re so nosy,” he huffed, all mock indignation. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re nosy?”

 _Don’t take the bait,_ you cautioned yourself.

Before you could reply, Lucifer continued. “Well, that assumes you even have other people to talk to.” He turned to look at you again, his expression speculative, doubtful. “And judging by how often you light up the Bat Signal, I’m guessing it’s not very many.”

The steering wheel groaned in your grip.

“It’s either that or you’ve got it _bad_ ,” he teased, drawing out the word.

The song replied so you didn’t have to. _“Do you need a woman to look after you?”_

Lucifer’s eyes stayed on you, making a slow, careful study of your face in profile. Eventually, he raised his hand and waved it in the air, circling you. “I’m sensing a lot of anger right now,” he said. “What’s got your kettle boilin’ today?”

You stayed quiet until you pulled into your driveway. “I got fired from my job,” you said.

A tremble passed through your jaw. Saying the words out loud hit you harder than you expected. It was real now, real and undeniable. You clenched your teeth to keep the new wave of tears locked in.

Lucifer kept pace with you easily as you hopped out of your SUV and stomped to your front door. “What’d you do?” he asked.

You glared at him as you fumbled for your keys. Your hands were as shaky as your voice. “ _Nothing_ ,” you said. “I didn’t steal, didn’t lie, didn’t dick them over for shifts. It was just some stupid part-time job but it was a _job_ , you know? It was mine and now it’s not, and it’s—it’s not fair.”

There. You said it. But saying it, admitting the injustice, did nothing to make you feel better. If anything, you felt worse.

Your keys clattered in your hands, the metal jingling and clinking loud enough to make your head hurt. “ _Fuck_ ,” you hissed. “I don’t _need_ this.”

Lucifer reached out and gently pulled your keys out of your grasp. He lowered his eyes and plucked your house key free from the tangle of chains and little plush figurines, decorations added in happier days. He handed the key back to you with a faint smile.

“You’ll be all right,” he said, shrugging. “Probably.”

A humorless laugh stumbled from your throat. “ _How_?” you demanded, unlocking your door and stepping inside.

Lucifer reached over your head to push the front door open wide, allowing you both to pass through just a half-step out of sync. “If it’s one thing I’ve noticed about you humans— _noticed_ , mind you, not _liked_ , because not all looking liking moves—”

You took off your coat, frowning at the strange words. “Did you just quote Romeo and Juliet to me?” you wondered. It’d been a while since you read the play yourself, but the 90s adaption was one of your favorite movies.

Lucifer took your coat, unexpectedly gallant—but then he tossed it in the direction of your couch. It just barely landed on the arm. “I talk, you listen,” he said, pointing between himself and you. “The thing about you humans is that you’re so… _stubborn_. Resilient. Rebellious.” He clapped his hands together and beamed at you with obvious pride. “You’re like cockroaches—or Cher. You just don’t know how to stay down.”

Tilting your head back to glare at him, you held up one finger. “One: Cher is amazing, don’t insult her in my presence.” You raised a second finger. “Two: is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Lucifer frowned, his forehead wrinkling with the effort. “Why wouldn’t it?” he asked. “I’m paying you a compliment. _Me_ ,” he added, pressing his hands to his chest, as if any praise from him would be reason enough to fall to his feet in gratitude.

“It’s a backhanded compliment,” you argued. “You’re insulting me instead of offering any actual comfort, so just… piss off with this negging crap. I don't want it.”

You pulled your fingers through your hair and turned away, marching through the front of your house to the hallway leading to the back. “Is it really that hard for you to just be _nice_?” you threw back over your shoulder, putting as much distance between the two of you as you could get with your short, brisk stride.

After pausing in front of your bedroom long enough to kick off your shoes, you pushed through the half open door and made a beeline straight for your bed. Bones aching, patience worn thin, you fell in a graceless lump onto the tangled blankets and scattered pillows. You pulled one closer, hugging it to your chest.

A few moments later, Lucifer strode through the doorway. It took him a step and a half to make it from the hall to the side of your bed. You steadied yourself for the added weight as he sat down near your feet, keeping a close watch on his curious expression.

He stared at you for a long, lingering moment. He didn’t look nearly as apologetic as you wanted him to, but he didn’t look angry, either. Not that he had any reason to be.

Lucifer’s pale eyes, like chips of ice, seemed flat, still, like a frozen lake in the heart of winter. But when he spoke, his voice was churning and warm. “What do you want from me?” he wondered. It was hard to tell if the question was to you or a thought spoken aloud.

You stared at him, confused.

“And don’t say you want nothing,” he said when you opened your mouth. “Everybody wants something. Lay it on me.” The corner of his lips twisted into a little smirk.

Slowly, you pushed yourself up, leaning your weight onto your elbows. “Some consistent behavior would be nice,” you said. “Also for you to answer my questions instead of leaving me in the dark half the time. And say a proper goodbye before you get whisked away in the breeze or whatever.”

He listened, still smirking. “That wasn’t what I meant,” he said.

“So? It’s what _I_ mean.” You chewed on your lip, weighing your next words carefully.

 _Oh, to hell with it._ “I also want you to stop acting like a bag of dicks. It’s rude. And hurtful. And not as charming as you think.”

Lucifer’s laughter was short, as bitter as unwelcome medicine. He kept his eyes from you, glancing quickly around the room, as if to search for an escape. But if he wanted to leave, then he certainly didn’t act like it. He didn’t move at all from his position on your bed, just a few feet from where you lay.

A few minutes passed in this sort of silence: wary and watchful, but also patient. Eventually, Lucifer turned his eyes back to you again.

“Feeling any better?” he asked.

“No.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Do you feel any _different_?”

You gave that a thought. “A little, yeah.”

He opened his hands, like a magician flourishing at the end of a trick. “You’re welcome.”

You stared at him. “Did you actually _do_ anything?”

“Sure I did,” he insisted, nodding. “I distracted you from how you felt. Gave you another way to feel. Transferred all that powerlessness and anger onto something else.” He paused and then tapped his chest with his thumb. “Me.”

You tried your best not to laugh—really, you did—but this was all so ridiculous that you couldn’t fight it for long. And when he put it _that_ way, you had to admit he was right: you _weren’t_ angry anymore. You weren't even all that scared. At least, not as much. Being without a job and living on your own was a terror you could barely comprehend in this single moment, but somehow, with Lucifer there to bicker at you until you smiled, your fears could no longer take root.

“Yeah, I figured. “You _are_ your favorite subject.”

“ _One_ of my favorite subjects,” Lucifer corrected you gently, patting your heel. He left his hand there, his long fingers tapping rhythmically along the arch of your foot. “The top one of three.”

“What are the other two?”

“The second is breaking out of prison,” he said, lifting his hand and tapped one finger against your ankle. You tensed under his touch—you could feel his faint chill through the thick woolen sock. “The third,” he added, peering up at you from under his lashes, “is figuring out all the new and exciting ways I can mess with you.”

You sighed and flopped back on your bed again, tucking the pillow under your head. “You’re a man after my own heart, Luci.”

“Don’t call me that,” he said. The bed creaked as he leaned forward, angling his body so that you fell in his shadow. “And I don’t gotta dig too hard to find _that_ ,” he said, picking up one of your braids and sweeping it back and forth across your chest, drawing a little _X_ as if to mark the spot of a treasure.

Well aware that he was still distracting you, and happy _to_ be distracted if it meant he would keep touching you, you deliberately pulled your mind away from how close he was and replayed his words in your head.

“What do you mean _prison_?” you asked, alarmed.

His dusty eyebrows shot up. “What did you think Hell _was_?” he asked.

“Your… home?”

Lucifer’s smile was a flat, lifeless thing. “Homes can be prisons.”

“So you’re under house arrest?”

“More or less. It’s more a cage than a house, if you want specifics.”

“I do.”

Lucifer’s face went very still. He regarded you for a moment, and then he took a breath and held up his hands. “Picture a cage,” he said, twisting his hands to make an approximate shape of one, “that hangs suspended and falls indefinitely. Picture a cage born of ore forged in the core of the first living—and first dead—sun, each side shackled together by the vertebrae of Leviathan. Picture a cage strung up in nowhere—no, first, picture nowhere as a _place_ , a Dark that is not absence, a shadow that is its own shape—and then picture having to stay there. Stay, not live. Picture only ever seeing this—the Dark, deep and lovely, yes, but also _patient_ , waiting, hungry. And you're the only meal it sees.”

You jumped as Lucifer dropped his hands back to the bed. One of them landed on the tangle of blankets, which he gathered into a tight fist. The other he returned to your knee, steadying himself against you, like a bird taking shelter on a long, aching flight.

“You know that feeling you get when you miss a step on the stairs?” he asked.

His voice was soft, painfully so. You held your breath and nodded.

“That’s what it’s like in there—any second, you’re so sure you’re going to crash down, but you never do. You just keep… slipping. Suspended. Waiting. And it never stops.”

You let out a breath and then took another back in, quick and quiet. "That sounds..." your voice faded, the words dying behind your lips. There  _were_ no words to describe what you'd just heard. Awful, yes. Horrible, heartbreaking, terrifying--yes, those could work, too. But they also didn't come close enough to the full agony of it. The only sound you could think to make, apart from a shrill scream of raw fury, was the same noise you were trying so hard to keep locked in your chest.

But tears--like the truth, and like blood--will find their way out, and it wasn't long before you were drying your eyes again, scattering the tears as fast as they came.

Lucifer watched you cry with a look of pure disbelief. You began to turn away from him, hoping to hide your tears, but he stopped you with a single plea:

"Don't move."

You knew what he meant: _don't turn away from me. Don't look away._

_Let me see you._

So you stayed curled up on your side, facing him, and pressed your hands against your eyes. If you could not stop the tears, then you could at least catch them before they fell. "But why?" you asked, keenly aware of how childish this sounded.

Lucifer's smile was a broken, hollow thing. "That's what I said, too," he sneered, bitter, hurt, "before, during, and after. That's what I ask each time one of my brothers drops by in person to give me the boot back down. And you know what they tell me?"

You shook your head, How could you know? How could you even guess what cruel words would crawl their way from a heavenly creature's mouth?

Lucifer's fingers tightened on your knee, his ever-present chill bleeding from his bones down to yours. " _'It's what you deserve.'_ "

A shiver tore through like a cold scythe slicing down your spine, cleaving through each notch. Again you shook your head, not to deny what Lucifer said, no, but to keep back the terror of it. If you didn't know any better--and you weren't quite sure you even  _wanted_ to know any of this in the first place--it almost seemed like the armies of heaven employed the inhumane logic of victim-blaming. This thought, more than the worry that you were committing some irreparably scarring sin by chatting with Lucifer at all, flooded you with a new wave of frozen fear.

 _Is that what we've been praying to?_ you wondered. _M_ _onsters crowned in halos, lying with golden grins?_

Even if what Lucifer said wasn't strictly the whole truth, the sheer lack of any divine mercy in the world seemed proof enough that Heaven, despite every Christian's determined mantra, had a stunning lack of compassion. You only had to open up a newspaper or look at your Twitter feed to see what was happening across the globe to know  _that_. At some point in your life, perhaps during your teenage years, you had decided that God's absence, His or Her or Their inattention--His or Her or Their  _willful neglect_ of Earth and what happened upon it--was just as bad as Hell having any interest in it.

 _So why not blame him, too?_ you thought, shifting your eyes onto Lucifer's face. You had no answer. Not yet.

It took a long while for you to find your voice again. “If the Cage is meant to keep you trapped," you said slowly, measuring out each word, "then… how come you’re here?”

“That’s the question of the hour, isn’t it?” Lucifer murmured as his face grew heavier, sinking under the weight of his thoughts. “Technically I’m not _meant_ to get out. A prison’s not doing its job if it doesn’t keep you locked in. I can slip through the bars here and there—do a little dreamwalking, show up in a vision, make a deal with one of the kids to wreak havoc and let me loose topside. But it doesn’t last long; it’s just a turn around the yard to stretch my legs.”

Slowly, as if wading his fingers through water, Lucifer reached out and smoothed a crease in the fold of your dress, pulling the hem so that it rested on the folded band of your knee-high socks. “And then _you_ put in a call for yours truly,” he said, his expression growing dark, like a storm piling on the horizon, “You—plain ol’ normal you, with no black altar, no _Grand Grimoire_ , no demands to _live deliciously_ , no attempts to do a Faustian deal _—_ _you_ pray to me, and by your word I’m… free.”

Your heart thumped unevenly against your ribs. How could this be happening? How _could_ this have happened? It was just a thought, a simple, fleeting thought, not something to hang your whole life on.

But it was. It  _was._ And you didn't have the slightest idea what to do next.

As you succumbed to a mini existential breakdown, Lucifer let his hand fall onto your knee, his long fingers curling around the bone and steadying himself against it. “Not completely free, of course,” he added. “I’m in for life—but you found a new way to spring me. So, you know, thanks for that. Wish I knew how it worked so I could do it myself.”

He tilted his head, as if really noticing you for the first time. You took your time enjoying his expression: his puzzled scowl, the slow narrowing of his deep-set eyes. You enjoyed as well how he struggled to maintain that debonair composure, all the while revealing his collection of various scars and sorrows.

He put on a good show--of course he did; he was the devil--but you saw right through him as easily as if he wore a mask of glass. He was as transparent as a windshield. Just like you hid in the shelter of silence, downcast eyes, and self-imposed isolation, the kind that would make Emily Dickinson proud, Lucifer hid behind his charms. His face, openly expressive, pretended to hide nothing from whoever spoke to him, but this pretense was just that: a farce, a façade. Even his words were veiled—not lies, no, not completely. Just bent truths contorted to hide the hurt inside.

Slowly, the tension began to melt out of your body, starting with your shoulders and then trickling down the rest of your back. Even the chill of your fear evaporated, leaving behind only the small, stubborn warmth of your heart and the undeniable comfort of Lucifer's impossible presence. You shifted, not turning away from him, but adjusting where you lay so that you were in a far more comfortable position than dramatically draped across a tangle of sheets and angled pillows.

"Tired?" he asked, in a voice as weary as you felt.

You nodded. "You don't have to stay," you said. "Can't imagine it's fun to watch me sleep."

"It's not," he laughed. "But if it's a choice between that and headin' back to stare into an endless void, well..." he pulled a face, pretending to think it over. "Well, it's hard to say."

"Oh, be nice to me," you whined--it was your turn for jokes now. Anything to break the tension that was too much to bear. "I had a big day." You swiped your hand through the air, making a feeble attempt to hit him.

Lucifer caught your hand by the wrist with a grin. Then, carefully, he stretched his fingers, sliding them one by one over your hand, over your knuckles, until his long, large grasp fitting around yours like two spoons curled together.

It was this thought--the two of you curled and coiled together, like two creatures designed to fit each other's every bend and shape--that followed you into the sudden swell of sleep that rushed over you. You thought of Lucifer's words-- _"the Dark, deep and lovely, yes, but also_ patient _"_ \--as you felt yourself slip into your mind's own waiting, watchful shadow, dimly aware all the while that his hand clung to yours with the desperation of a drowning man eager for his next breath of air.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are gonna get,,,,,,, weird after this. Also shamelessly romantic/more sensual and intimate to help balance out the existential Lynchean nightmare that is a cruel cosmos. It's probably fine.

This was no ordinary dream. It was too real, too vivid, too… _aware,_ as if whatever chose the sights and sounds did so with a cunning calculation.

One moment your eyes were open, your gaze fixed onto Lucifer's damnably handsome face, and then the next they swung shut, like a door pushed back into its frame by a heavy hand.

Your eyes were closed, yet open. Your vision was dark, yet there was light to see.

It started innocently—and oddly—enough. You were lying on your bed again, in a room that was no longer lit by the late afternoon sun, but was now shrouded entirely in a moonlit dark. Lucifer was no longer with you, and you sat up in a blur, peering around your room, wondering where a man of that height could possibly hide.

A soft tapping sound drew your attention to your doorway.  _Knock knock knock._ You heard your voice before you spoke.  _Who is it?_

“Who is it?”

A man entered. He was short—perhaps only a few inches taller than you—and had the sort of disheveled appearance of either a college student or a writer: messy light brown hair, scraggly stubble, unwashed, wrinkled clothes.

“Thought it was time I dropped by to see you,” the man said, his voice thin, strained. Even his voice sounded unkempt, as if he spoke with a collection of words he found scattered on the floor of his thoughts. “Can’t stay for long, though. Someone might slip through and... well, that wouldn't be good.”

You watched as you swung your legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Each step you took echoed like the toll of a distant, lonesome bell.  _Who are you?_

“Who are you?”

But your words were lost in the empty air. The man gave you a faint smile, tapped his hands on the frame of your door, and stepped back.

“If I could make this easier for you, I would,” he said, but there was something strange about his tone. It reminded you of your manager’s voice when she fired you: his words sounded rehearsed, right down to the regret. “But, hey—you seem pretty tough. I bet you can handle it.”

_Handle what?_

The man nodded to himself as he spoke, almost as if he were trying to convince himself to believe his own words. His pale eyes—the same bright blue as Lucifer’s—made a quick pass around your face. “You have to trust each other— _love_ each other,” he said. “If you don’t, neither of you will make it out alive.”

Before you could react, the man moved out of sight, further down the hall.

“Hey—wait!” The words left your mouth first this time.

But he did not wait.

So you followed him.

For the first few steps, it was still your hallway. Then, on the thirteenth step, something moved beneath your feet. You shivered, and your eyes drifted down to the ground in time to watch as the wood rippled like water, rising higher and higher, tearing itself between every atom and scattering into something new.

It wasn’t long before your home changed before your eyes. Thick, velvet blue paint slid over every surface, until all of it—the walls, the ceiling, even the shimmering floor under your feet—became a dark, sapphire sea. Doors sank into the deep, viscous ooze, their brass handles glimmering feebly before they, too, sank from view. The few pictures you had on the walls—mostly “came with the frame” families, but also a few shots of you and your parents on vacations years ago, scattered among photos of old pets and friends—bobbed like debris in a shipwreck, swaying forward and back before the blue ooze swallowed them, too.

You waited for the same thing to happening to you.

And you waited. Waited.

As you stood there, waiting for this dream to go full-blown nightmare, the scraggly man’s words rose up in a rush. _“You have to love each other.”_

You didn’t have to think too hard to guess who he meant. You were more worried about the next part of his statement: _“If you don’t, neither of you will make it out alive.”_

If it was a threat, then it was not only poorly delivered, but poorly followed through, seeing as he walked away after telling you. And if it wasn’t a threat—if he really wanted to make things easier for you—then his vague, cryptic message was worse than useless, and certainly not helpful.

 _“Neither of you will make it out alive.”_ From where—this dream? But you were alone here; Lucifer wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

 _“You have to trust each other.”_ You _did_ trust Lucifer—didn’t you? And it seemed like he was starting to trust you, too.

 _“You have to love each other.”_  You... really had no idea where to start with that one.

Something hissed in the air around you, as if whatever lurked behind the scenes of the dream was getting impatient.

What was happening? _How_ was it happening? Dream or no, even this was too weird. Not nearly as bad as that month-long stretch where you had sleep paralysis, sure, but still within the same realm of _uncomfortably intense._

With no other choice left to you, you carefully inched your feet forward, half expecting to tumble into an invisible abyss. On and on you walked, pausing every now and then to listen to the faint, deep sighs that unfurled from the hidden seams of the dream. Eventually this, too, faded into the tense silence. As you continued fearfully into the unknown, a prickle of fear needled the back of your neck. Every step you took further down the hall echoed like a hammer on stone; it rippled in the endless, impossible space like pebbles dropped into a once-still pond, disturbing its placid waters. You stopped walking more than once, convinced that something would stir at your movement. The current silence was too fragile to do anything but break—but it didn’t. You wished this made you feel better. You wished this would give you hope or courage, but the spark of both gutted and died too fast to matter.

After a few minutes of this, you noticed that the hallway grew longer with your every step, elongating like the spine of a great creature stretching its bones from a long night’s rest. You steadied your shaking hand against where the walls had been, half expecting your fingers to pass right through the shimmering mass.

The wall shivered at your touch. You drew back with a gasp. It was warm, wet— _alive._

 _Stop it. Stop. Stop. Enough._ That’s it. You were at your limit. Dream or no dream, you weren’t going to play along with this crap for another minute. This wouldn’t be the first time you’d waken yourself up from a bad dream. It wasn’t often that you were lucid when you slept, but the few times you were, you’d jolted yourself awake instead of face down whatever new terror your brain conjured up to throw at you.

And so, with your mind resolved and your teeth clapped together, you turned, jaw clenched, ready to head back the way you came.

But there was no way to go. The hall was gone, obliterated, dripping blue ooze and all. There was nothing _to_ see but the jagged teeth of a cliff, its floor a lightning pattern of white and black, and beneath it an endless, yawning void.

You stared into the darkness, too amazed to look away. Something was waiting for you in there—you knew it, could _feel_ it. But you weren’t afraid.

“… Lucifer?” His name left your lips in a feeble voice. It was almost too much to hope that he’d find a way here to save you. Your luck had to run out some time—and you most certainly _did_ consider yourself lucky enough to have even a fallen angel at your fickle beck and call. But it made a disheartening amount of sense that even the devil could only do so much against the tangled rat’s nest of anxiety that was your waking—and sleeping—mind.

You curled your hands into fists. “Wake up,” you commanded. “Wake up—wake. Up.”

But you didn’t. Couldn’t.

Was this really a dream? You shook your head, hoping to scatter the doubts before they took root. “It’s gotta be,” you protested weakly. “Please. Please?”

Just over your shoulder, a long, low, metallic groan crept across the silence. It sounded like a great door opening, its hinges shrieking in protest from the sudden use.

You turned, swaying a little with the movements of your heart, which was hammering hard against your ribs. “I can be brave,” you whispered, hoping that by saying so, your courage would soon follow. “I can be brave.”

The sound of a door opening soon materialized as the very same thing: a double door inlaid with gold and mahogany swung towards you, the movements long, precise, almost cautious. You made a quick note of the designs on the door before each side moved out of sight. The symbols looked familiar somehow, as if you recognized the script but not the pattern.

The room behind the doors was as white as bone, as blank as the world before God’s hand spilled ink across it. White, yes, and blank, true—but not empty. Something was in there watching you, waiting for you. But it was different than the presence in the darkness, or even the invisible witness that hissed and lurked behind the walls. This was colder, crueler. Just looking into the endless world of white made your stomach heave with a fresh wave of pure fear.

“I can be brave,” you said again, your voice thin and frail.

The Presence inside the room laughed at you. Its voice was warped and wicked, as if coming through a distortion filter. “Prove it,” it jeered. A man’s voice, just as cold as you sensed him to be. “Show me. Convince me.”

Behind you, the waiting, watching Dark seemed to _convulse_ , a pulse that was less of fear and more the tension that rippled through a fist poised to strike. You stared straight ahead, unable to look away from that endless world of white, even as the Dark pulled at your thoughts, clutching and clawing like a hand trying desperately to pull you free from the drowning sea.

Faintly—so hushed that even a sigh would drown it out completely—you heard a familiar voice call your name.

 _Lucifer._ It had to be. But where was he—and where were _you_?

A shimmering, shifting light spilled out from the blank white room like the foam cresting a wave. Its tendrils curled across the floor, tumbling closer to where you stood, reaching for you with eager, scraping claws.

Something hissed in the Light in front of you, no different than a creature opening its maw to taste your fear.

 _“ **Wake up**!” _ Lucifer’s voice, again. Clearer this time, as if he were shouting right next to your ear. And you tried to wake up, truly, you tried, but this dream—this vision—this world and whoever made it—held you prisoner in his merciless hands.

With a voice as shrill as the Devil’s Chord, the once-forbidden note of music—music, the first common tongue of all creation, according to your fallen angel friend—the Light called to you, only _you_. It shouted your name. The force of it hit you like a burst of wind, an explosion of sound targeting only you, _you._ This voice, and the man making it, _knew_ you—and, unlike Lucifer, he had neither the time nor concern to spare for your whimpers or your tears.

The longer you looked upon the Light, the fiercer it became, fierce in power, in spirit. You stared at this awful Light as if it were something to hate and fear. Light—any brilliant radiance of any kind, as well as its piercing sight—was one of the first real terrors humankind ever knew, all those ages and ancient days ago in Eden. For what was that idyllic garden really, but a sham, a farce—a formicarium for a divine voyeur?

As your troubled thoughts turned shamelessly blasphemous, you became distantly aware of something solid taking shape in the Light. It cast no shadow upon the shimmering, ever-present brilliance nor whatever vicious creature lurked inside—assuming, of course, they weren’t one and the same.

You fixed your gaze upon the figure in the Light, struggling to see through the swell of tears that burned in your unblinking eyes. Was it—he—an angel? He had to be. Who—or  _what_ —else could be so luminously brutal?

 _Maybe Rilke was right. Every angel_ is _terrifying._

The tendrils of Light that steadily made their way towards you now skittered over your feet and clamped around your ankles like irons. You jolted forward, your balance overthrown, your hands splayed out to catch your fall. The instant your fingers passed through the wisps of Light, your wrists slammed together hard enough to make your hands spasm with a flood of pain.

You opened your mouth to speak, but no words emerged. You took a breath—no air came. You had air to breathe, yes, but your brain could no longer use it to give shape and sound to the thoughts thundering through your head. You were stuck, locked, frozen. The only control you had, such as it were, were the tears that continued to flow from your eyes and your hands, which you bent into fists, scraping your nails across the inside of your palms

“Look at you,” the cruel angel declared. “Weak. Pathetic.”

Another burst of wind roared from the Light, knocking you back.

“You make it so easy—but I guess that’s what he likes about you.” There was no doubt about it; this voice was coming from the Light itself—was, perhaps, the Light given voice.

The wind stopped just as quickly as it came. Then, before you could recover, the wind became a gasp, and the air _pulled_ on you, dragging you forward by your wrists hard enough to make your shoulders ache.

The wind— _the wind!_ All those times when Lucifer had been torn from your side—this thing, this Light, this angel— _this_ was the source of it. It had to be.

But how? _How?_ And why here, now? And why _you_?

You clenched as fury flooded through you, a pure, blistering rage that you had no idea could find a home in you. Holy though this thing might be, that didn’t give him the right to toy with you, torture you, grind you beneath his enhaloed heel like a half-crushed bug. He might have the authority, perhaps, but not the right.

The angel seemed to sense your anger. His laugh was cruel, cunning. “You're such a tiny thing,” he jeered, “and with a mind to match. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

 _Then why waste time making fun of me?_ you thought. Oh, how you wished you could roll your eyes.

The angel seemed to sense this, too. The Light tore at you again, dragging you forward like you were a chained dog forced to heel.

Was mind-reading a trait shared among heavenly hosts? Did they all have some kind of insight into your soul and its every creeping shadow? Lucifer had done this before too—had known your anger, known your fascination with him, known the weight of your heart, all without you having to say a word. You didn’t mind when it was him, but that was different. You _shared_ those things with him, had opened up to him willingly, trusting him with, if not the care of it, then at least the knowledge of your heart’s secrets.

But this? This was different. Your heart was not a thing to share with this vicious, vile creature—it was a thing to _take._

Is this what heaven was really like? Is this how it felt to be loved by God and His angels in all their awful, agonizing glory? You hated it, hated every moment of it with all the wrath you could conjure, using pain and fear as kindling for this heretical, heartfelt fire.

You had to get out of here, that much was clear. You had to escape, to wake up—but how? How could you hide from a Light that saw past your skin, slipping deeper than marrow? A Light that kept you trapped in its gaze for as long as it looked upon you? Where could you hide?

The answer, when it came, was beautiful in its brutal simplicity: in the Dark, of course. But how could you get there without the angel seeing you?

“I’ll get right to the point,” the angel continued. “You can hide in all the rejected realities and discarded universes you like. It won’t make a difference—and it certainly won’t stop me from doing what I have to do. I am coming for you, and I will find you. Lucifer can hide you wherever he likes. He can carve shielding sigils into your bones or burn it into your skin—it won’t matter. It won’t help you.”

The angel fell silent. Something about the Light seemed to dim around the edges, like a candle flame shrinking around the end of a wick. Then, he spoke again, his voice a low, funereal march. “Father isn’t perfect. Powerful, yes, but not without flaw. That’s why he expects so much from us: we must be better than he is. We have to get right what he got wrong.”

Of all the questions buzzing in your head, you kept returning to the same word: _Why?_ Why was he telling you this?

You thought you could sense a smirk hiding in that hideous Light. “I’m _telling_ you this,” he sneered, in obvious reply to your thoughts, “because unlike my brother, I don’t hide my true intentions. _You_ are a mistake. Every breath you take and thought you have and word you speak—every time you press your will into the world and grant your own wish is a travesty, an insult. And if my Father won’t do anything about you, then I will. I have to.”

Something scratched at your memory like a hand clawing at a locked door. Long ago, when you were barely six years old, your father took you to an art museum in the nearby city. It was there that you saw a statue of the Archangel Michael striking down his brother, Satan— _Lucifer_. It was there that you first learned to fear God, Heaven, and all its creatures.

It was hard to say what scared you the most about the statue: was it Michael’s calm face, or the mechanical way he pressed his divine blade against his brother’s naked back? Was it how disinterested Michael seemed with it all, either unaware of or unmoved by his brother’s cries for mercy?

Was it the devil’s face, contorted with terror, mouth frozen in the rictus of an eternal scream?

Whatever it was, that statue had given you nightmares for months. Considering all this, it didn’t surprise you that the cruel angel himself finally deigned to appear in your dreams.

You tore your lips open, defying the power of his terror. “You're Michael, aren't you?”

In response, another eruption of wind roared around you, hard enough to sting your ears and tear at your face like knives. It was the same wind that always stole Lucifer away from you—you were sure of it this time, as sure of it as you were your own name. Who else could control that maelstrom of raw fury but Michael, the tyrant? Michael, the conquering angel, the first in God’s army?

“Name me all you like,” he howled. “That changes nothing. I _will_ find you. I _will_ get through.”

As he spoke, the wind of his voice pressed against your chest, knocking you back. You bent backwards, contorted with pain, until the force of Michael’s voice sent you sprawling. You slid closer to the edge of his jagged white precipice, an island of Light in the void lapsing realities, spanning Sleep and Waking, an interstice that souls could only ever go.

You struggled, clawing at the air, your teeth bared. He could knock you down, but you would not _stay_ down. Not while there was breath in your lungs and a fire in your heart and a will that commanded your every thought. Rebellion came easy to you, as natural as breathing, as blinking. It had been this way ever since you were an infant; your first word, after all, was _No._ You were born to rebel, born to defy, to _dare_.

Somewhere, both too far away and as close to you as the marrow of your bones, you _felt_ Lucifer and his pride. His heart, darkly shining, swelled with the force of it. Oh how he yearned to cradle you in it, give you shelter in the shadow of his wings, brave little creature that you were.

And you knew it, could _feel_ it. **_Defy_** , it seemed to say. **_Dare. Resist._**

Your every cell screamed rebellion. He heard this, too, and even as he ached to feel you suffer, he could not help but marvel at the sound.

Distant though he was, and though he was barred from being more than a long-detached observer to your dream, Lucifer watched anxiously as you forced yourself to sit up, glaring at the Light and the angel inside.

“ _No_.”

Ancient and world-weary as he was, Lucifer was perilously close to a swoon. He could _see_ how brave you were; defiance came so _easy_ to you. It was your mother tongue, the kindling spark of your spirit. He would, if he could, press his lips to these disobedient cinders, breathing life into your stubborn heart, turning it to a blaze bright enough to illuminate even the darkest corners of his Cage.

“ _No_ ,” you said again, spitting the word like poison.

And though it hurt you both—though the devil himself felt a leap of fear to watch you do it—you shut your eyes and _prayed._

“ _Find me, Lucifer. Find me, save me, take me home._ ”

You were, perhaps, the only mortal in recent history who possessed the true power of prayer. And you gave your will not to the service of Heaven, but to yourself, your heart and all her secrets and shadowed desires. It was this power that lurked in your first wish, the words that started it all: _“If God won’t care about me, then let the devil do it.”_

And he did, he did. How couldn’t he?

You scrambled to your feet—a difficult task, considering you were still bound. Michael screamed again, and you used the momentum of his fury to push yourself over the cliff’s edge, diving fearlessly into the Dark, deep and lovely and loyal. You fell, you flew in reverse, screaming yourself awake, straight into Lucifer’s cold, clutching grasp.

“I’ve got you,” he said in a breathless rush, wrapping his arms around you, pulling you against the hard plane his chest. “I’ve got you—I’m here.”

You heard what he did not say. _“I can keep you safe. I can and will keep you.”_

The minutes passed in silence, broken intermittently by Lucifer’s hushed murmurs as he rocked you back and forth. Finally, when you had the strength for it, your trembling hands clutched at his shirt as you buried your face against his chest, seeking out the sound of his heart.

“Your brother’s a real jerk,” you croaked, breaking the silence.

Despite it all, he laughed. You shut your eyes with a weary smile, and savored the sound, taking comfort in the shelter of his voice.

 _"You have to love each other"_ that strange, scraggly man had said. And in that moment, cradled in Lucifer's embrace, his lips in your hair and his hands curled against your back, you knew that you  _could_ love him. Could, would—and maybe already did.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so full disclosure: i think the jack storyline is blah and I'm not fully comfy with how he was conceived.
> 
> but since this is an AU i figured i'd change how he came about: jack is pres jefferson's biological son, and lucifer latched onto the idea of being a father because he's a complicated fucker who is eager for attachments and doesn't know how to make them. so think of lucifer as a desperately devoted stepfather who is denied that chance. he CHOSE to be jack's dad, wanting to be the father that he never had, and he can't. and that hurts.
> 
> okay, on with the chapter.

“Tell me what happened,” Lucifer said, wasting little time now that your fear had mostly faded. “All of it, every detail. Right now.”

“Weren’t you there?” you wondered, a part of your heart shrinking up tight. The idea that the warmth of his affection, and the burning rush of his pride that gave you courage, may be the only things your brain invented on its own was temptingly terrible, a cruel kin to all your doubts. And it was the last thing you wanted to believe.

“I only caught a few bits. Bad brain frequency, remember?” he added, tapping you on your forehead.

“Again?” you asked, frowning.

“Still,” he replied. “You’re a hard woman to read, so make this easier on me, will ya?”

You fought off a smile and reached for his hand with both of yours, trapping it in your grasp. Your fingers were still shaking, but the tremors were less intense than even your usual caffeine jitters. He probably didn’t even notice.

He noticed. Slowly, his gaze never leaving your face, Lucifer carefully closed his free hand over yours, running his thumb over the peaks and valleys of your knuckles.

The distant wail of an ambulance drew you from your thoughts. You pulled back from Lucifer to sit up straight and took a quick glance around your room. It was dark. The only light in the room was the lamp on your nightstand, and the faint golden slats from the streetlamps outside.

“What time is it?” you wondered, amazed. You never wore a watch, and your phone was… somewhere nearby. And probably in need of a good charge. You sighed. As far as frustrations went, a dead phone battery was pretty low on the list of your current grievances.

Lucifer’s lips tightened at your question, which was very clearly _not_ an answer to his own. “More like what _day_ ,” he corrected.

You peered at him with a frown, waiting. Was this a joke? A prank?

“It’s Monday,” he added. “Monday _night_ , 4:56 AM.”

“I was out for _three days_?” you said in a high, tense voice. Now you _really_ wanted to know where your phone was. What if someone called you—your distant friends, your somewhat less distanced parents? What if _work_ called you—?

You froze in place as the realization hit you. That’s right—you were fired.

Like a dam overflowing, that one thought ushered in more, and none of them were pleasant. Your friends were scattered, not only out of town but across time zones and countries. There was little chance they’d get in touch with you directly unless it was for something really important. By contrast, you only spoke to your parents about things that _weren’t_ important. All the really dire, pressing matters that families probably should talk about were kept quiet, owing to your family’s compulsive—or perhaps genetic—need to keep everything stifled to the point of suffocation. There were a few exceptions to this rule—sudden illness and tragic deaths were the proverbial elephants in the room and could not be avoided for long—but these happened so few and far between that it hardly mattered.

Even so, even with all that went unsaid between you, you liked talking to your parents. It was easy, predictable—reliable. Just about the one thing in your life that could be considered such.

With your shoulders slumped and thoughts turning dark, you let out a sigh and leaned forward, pressing your forehead against Lucifer’s chest with a soft thump.

“Were you here this whole time?” you asked, your voice muffled.

“More or less.”

You scowled at him from under your lashes, slowly lifting your head so that the tip of your nose skimmed his chest. “You can tell me if you left, you know,” you said. “I don’t care if you ducked out—I’d be more worried if you _did_ stick around, to be honest.”

“Oh, well that’s nice,” he jeered, his voice flat. Taking your shoulders in his hands, he pushed you back so that you were an arm’s length away from him—which was a surprising distance, considering _how_ long his arms were. “I stayed. Now answer my question,” he insisted. “What did you see?”

There was no point in delaying it further; you told him everything. Well, everything that you could remember. It may not have been a _normal_ dream, but its details were certainly fading from your mind as fast as dreams often did. You trailed off more than once, your words drifting into the fog that flooded your brain, an inevitable consequence of your mental and emotional exhaustion.

It didn’t help that Lucifer made for a poor listener, interrupting with sudden questions or squirming where he sat, like a cat struggling to be free. When you described the man who had spoken to you from your hallway, he actually bolted to his feet and glared out your door, as if a figure might appear in the hall just by being mentioned.

You watched Lucifer’s reaction with a curious look, thinking of the phrase “ _speak of the devil and he shall appear._ ” Did that apply to other cosmic creatures, too? Demons, angels—monsters, myths, legends, and all other unknowable creations? All of them except for God?

“Did you know this guy? Recognize him at all?” Lucifer asked, still peering into your hallway. It was mostly dark; the light from your bedside lamp extended in a small circle whose edges barely inched across your doorway. But even in the shadows you could still clearly make out his expression. Deep lines creased his forehead as he frowned, and the tight press of his lips and the clench of his jaw made you think of a trap slammed shut.

You studied his profile, wishing you had any artistic talent so that you could commit the sight to ink and paper. He had a striking face, one that, if you saw it in public and had the time to stare without being caught, would have held your interest even if it belonged to a normal—mortal—man. At first glimpse he seemed like a perfectly ordinary man—maybe someone you glanced at twice, just to be sure you didn’t invent the stunning intensity of his blue eyes—but the longer you looked upon him, the more you could _feel_ what lurked beneath that skin and brought that face to life.

You continued to study Lucifer in silence, wondering at the depth and intensity of your reaction to his appearance. Through all the clutter in your brain and the confusion of the past month since making his acquaintance, one thought remained certain and slightly alarming: the devil was…. Well, pretty damn good looking. It wasn’t just the color his eyes or the way they sometimes seemed to flash with some deeper, inner light, nor was it the range and depth of his expressions, and how little he seemed inclined to hide _any_ of his emotions from playing out over his face. It wasn't even just his voice, which could be equal parts seductive and oddly sincere. It was in the smaller details too, the things someone else might consider a flaw or even ugly, like the creases of his broad forehead that were worn into him like a groove, or the little scratches of crows’ feet at the corner of his eyes.

It all boiled down to a simple truth: you really did have it bad for him, and he was somehow just your type.

You let out a soft, involuntary sigh. Lucifer turned to peer at you, his frown more pronounced.

You composed yourself as quickly as you could. “No, but he didn’t have the kind of face that stands out. You could lose him in a crowd of one.”

He laughed in a short, almost begrudging tut. “So he’s no one you know? You’re sure?”

You nodded. “As sure as I can be. Why?”

"Just makin' sure it's not some disgruntled ex putting in an appearance," he jeered. "Wouldn't want to have to knock off the competition."

You rolled your eyes. "Dunno how to break it to you, but I don't make a habit of dating supernatural men."

"No?"

You shook your head. "Nope."

"Glad to be the first," he murmured, and gave you a wink.

Smirking, clearly satisfied that he had sufficiently distracted you, Lucifer began to pace the length of your room, making half circles around your bed. You watched as his expression darkened with the gathering clouds of his thoughts. “What did he say to you?” he asked, ignoring your own question.

You opened your mouth to answer—but no words came. You could _feel_ them; they were perched just on the edge of your tongue, so you did your best to catch them. “He said… he said something about us,” you hedged carefully, straining to remember every word. Only the gist of it returned to you, and even that left you with some doubts. You drew a line between yourself and Lucifer, who had turned to face you in his second pass of your room. “Something about us and how we won’t make it out alive unless…”

Lucifer paused in mid-stride. “Unless what?” he pressed.

You shook your head. “I’m not sure,” you huffed, shutting your eyes. You pressed your fingers to them and rubbed hard, as if to clear your sight and allow the memory to return. “He sounded tired—no, not tired. Sad, I think? Resigned?” You shook your head, opened your eyes, and took in a breath. “I dunno. He didn’t seem like he was threatening me. He sounded like he was trying to make the best out of bad news. Let me down gently, you know?”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t look too deep into that,” Lucifer cut in.

“Why?”

“If you kill someone with kindness then they never see it coming.”

You stared at him.

“What?” he demanded, eyebrows raised.

“Is that what you’d do?” you asked, your voice strangely wooden.

“It’s what my family does,” he argued.

As bitter as this truth was, there was some small bit of comfort locked in it. “And you were always the rebel,” you said, your tone softening. “Never did what they wanted you to.”

Lucifer’s smile was almost lost in the pale shadows from where the night’s darkness and the wan moonlight bled through your window. "I prefer an honest approach. Don't leave them guessing. I always hate punishing someone who doesn't know they have it comin'. Their fear makes it all the sweeter."

You clung to the edge of your bed, wondering just who he meant. Sinners? Demons?

Did it matter?

He started to pace again, striding in slow, steady steps through the little bubble of darkness that brimmed on the edge of the lamplight. “Did he say anything else?” he asked.

Again the words danced just out of your reach. “We have to stay together. It’s something we can only _do_ together—surviving, I mean.” He’d said something more, you were sure of it, but you still weren't sure  _what._

As your silence continued, you heard Lucifer let out a little irritated huff. He rolled one of his long fingers in a little tumble, as if he could reel in the words that you struggled to say. “Go on,” he urged.

“I’m _thinking_ ,” you snapped. The words came out harsher than you’d meant.

“Think out loud. Talk.”

“If you’re so impatient, why don’t you just tune in to my frequency?” you suggested, wagging your head back and forth at the mention of his strange power.

Now it was Lucifer’s turn to fall silent. “I want you to say it to me,” he finally said, his voice strangely coarse. “I’m listening.”

Warmth flooded through your face in a sudden rush. You shouldn’t be surprised that he could be so… persuasive, and it soothed you to know there was no sense of cunning or calculation in his voice. In fact, he sounded more pleading than anything else. Judging by his pensive expression, you figured this way of talking wasn’t usual for him—was, perhaps, as much a marvel to him as it was to you.

“You’re always listening,” you said quietly. It wasn’t a judgment but a simple fact, one that you were more grateful for than you knew how to describe. “That’s what started all this. That’s why we’re—together.” You hesitated on the word, unsure how he would receive it.

“ _You_ started it,” he said, his tone playful, with just a touch of curiosity. “Not that I’m not _grateful_ ,” he added with a half shrug. “It’s a nice change of pace—plus these conjugal visits are a nice bonus to all the fresh air.”

Your face burned with another burst of blood. A similar flush flooded into your thighs, and you rubbed your hands on them, trying to scatter the tingling sensation that flickered through you. “This isn’t a joke,” you mumbled.

“Who said I’m joking?” he countered.

You looked up, every muscle in your neck straining with the effort. Your mind was at war with itself, torn between trepidation and—if you had to be brutally honest—a slowly boiling, simmering pleasure.

The air in the room shifted, as if something crouched between you now, coiled tight and ready to spring. You lifted your chin, cleared your throat, and returned to the topic of your dream-not-a-dream. “I followed the man into the hall, but it didn’t stay the hall for long. It led somewhere else. It felt like… like a bridge between somewhere else and my—my mind, my soul. Wherever it is that all this happened.”

You shivered at the thought of an angel—a cruel one at that—peering into the very essence of your being with nothing but the intent to terrify and harm. And then you shivered again, for a different reason this time, as you realized that it was a _fallen_ angel who had touched your soul not to harm but to help.

And wasn’t that what you prayed for, all those weeks ago? That if God couldn’t care for you, cradle you in His mercy, then let the devil have a go at it?

And wasn’t that what happened, both on that first night and during every meeting since? Didn’t he answer your every prayer, no matter how small, and delighted in your dark courage? He responded to your daring desire to have some creature of heaven care for you, even played a game of truth or dare with you, an act that breathed into your audacity like warming a fading ember too stubborn to stop burning.

You sat up straight, your memory suddenly becoming clear. “Oh. Hey. I just remembered: the guy tried to warn me about Michael. Said he couldn't stay for long in case someone else came through, too. I guess that’s how Michael got in. Does that make sense?”

Lucifer nodded. “Sort of. Sounds like he’s getting desperate; he’s not the type to sneak around. Ol’ Mikey likes to make an entrance.” He rubbed his lips with the side of his hand, thinking.

A chill slipped through your spine like a melting shard of ice, curling and sliding through your skin. “Was he always like this?”

“Like what?”

“So—so vicious.” You made a cradle with your fingers and twisted them in your lap. “Does he really hate you that much?”

He didn't answer. You dared to glance up at him, and froze at what you saw. Lucifer’s face was dark. You immediately regretted the question, but before you could take it back, he stunned you into silence by answering. “He’s loyal—the most loyal, almost to a fault. Dad gives him a task, he does it.”

You bit your lip. Pain rippled through your jaw, making it clench. “Do you think…?” you started, forcing the words out. “Do you think that God asked him to do this? Or is he just doing what he thinks is right?”

“I don’t know what he’s thinking. I can’t—and maybe I never could,” he said, his voice hard. “We've been strangers for a long time now, longer than we were family.”

This conversation had taking an alarmingly drastic turn. You could hardly believe the words coming out of your mouth, asking questions that you’d never really considered before. The nature of God and heaven, its absence or its inconceivable plans, had never really crossed your mind until recently. It just didn’t seem to effect you in any way until now, and you didn’t see much of a point in spending time thinking about things you couldn’t understand.

But the universe worked in mysterious ways, telling jokes only it knew how to laugh at. And for all your years spent detached from God and any faith at all—all the times you averted your eyes from any kind of divine devotion—that didn’t mean you were passing by unobserved.

But why you?  _Why you_ —and _how_? Was this all also part of some plan—and whose? None of these questions brought you any nearer to the truth, or a satisfying answer. In fact, all your wondering seemed to confuse you further, each question a _brutum fulmen_ designed to pick at your resolve and tender heart.

As you despaired over who was in control of your life, of who was to rule you if not yourself, you watched as dawn gradually crept into your room. The sky outside your window became a palette of pink and gold. It illuminated Lucifer, surrounding him like a full-body halo, stretching in arcs that almost looked like wings.

“What did you see in the hallway?” he continued, drawing your attention back to the present.

“Nothing—the walls turned blue and there were these doors in front of me, but I didn’t want to go through them. I tried to turn back, but I couldn’t. The only thing behind me was darkness—kind of like what you described when we talked about your Cage.”

“Was anything in there?”

“I don’t know. It was _dark._ ”

“Could you hear anything?” he continued, pacing faster now. “You have to think—can you do that for me? For the both of us? It’s your life on the line here, too.”

“Yeah that’s not gonna make this any easier on me,” you grumbled. “I don’t work well under pressure.”

“Then you better learn and learn fast,” he said, with no malice in his voice, just the simple harshness of a bitter truth. “Hop on top, take charge—change positions.” He tilted his head, studying you with a long, heated look. “Didn’t think you’d be that type of gal. Had you figured as more submissive.”

You sighed. “Are you done?”

“Just one more,” he said, holding up both hands, his first fingers raised. “Sex joke,” he said in a loud voice. He clapped his hands together and grinned at you. “There. It’s out of my system. So—you were saying?”

“We were talking about the darkness.”

“Right—the Dark.” You noted the small change in his inflection, transforming the word into idea, a power, a presence.

“Like I said… it reminded me of your Cage. And that’s when I thought of you, which I guess is how you found me.”

Lucifer grinned and opened his arms, a welcoming gesture as well as a display of charming arrogance. “That’s me—always turning up like a bad penny.”

“Hardly,” you said, rolling your eyes. “Not to stroke your ego—I don’t think it _needs_ stroking—but you do realize you’re literally the answer to my prayers, right?”

“A guy likes to know he’s appreciated. Can’t fault me for that.”

“Of course I _appreciate_ you,” you insisted, squinting your eyes against the brightly shining dawn. However difficult it was to get the words out, you found that your temper—so often the cause of your tears—was also just as firmly linked to your heart and all its stubborn defiance. “Can’t you tell? Don’t you _know_?” You waved your hand to your bedroom wall. “Do I gotta spell it out for you?”

“All right, Bennie, cool your jets,” he mused, and you fought back a laugh at his Elton John reference. “Might wanna adjust how you pay a compliment, by the way. Being all prickly and sharp sends out some mixed signals.”

You knew what he was saying—what he _wasn’t_ saying. You knew, too, that he was asking something of you, not so much a challenge as a plea.

Slowly, your heart thundering hard, you stood up. You walked towards him, smiling as his head tilted down to accommodate your height—or lack thereof.

“Lucifer,” you whispered.

You heard him breathe out in a low, slow hush. As if the sound of your voice drew the air from him, pulled at him, had any power over him.

To know a name was to shape it with your breath, to make a home for it in your mouth and mind. And, like his brother, Lucifer’s name was power, was glory—and it was sorrow and softness, too. Something ancient and strange and wonderful, deserving, _demanding_ of awe.

You reached up to skim your fingers across his chin, trailing up his jaw, until you cupped his cheek in your hand. As always, Lucifer’s skin was faintly cold beneath you, burning like a frozen sun. But he warmed to you, drawing from your fire—sharing, not stealing it. What a strange pair you made: mortal and angel, woman—devil. Whole and complete in yourselves yet drawn together all the same.

Something nudged at your memory. _“You have to trust each other. You have to love each other.”_

The words slammed into your mind, rocking you back on your heels. That was it. That’s what that strange man said. It was the only part of his cryptic message that made sense. Trust Lucifer, _love_ him—and let him do the same for you.

“I trust you,” you said, your voice strong and clear. Not a heavenly choir, no, but just a human one, raw and sincere and _yours._

Lucifer leaned into your hand with a slight tilt of his head, all the better to hear the song of your voice.

“I trust you,” you said again, not quite ready to say the other three words. “That’s how we’ll get through this. If we believe in each other—if we have faith and hold onto that—then we’ll make it through, no matter what your brother tries to do.”

“You’re not afraid?” he asked, his eyebrows lifting.

You snorted. “You’re fuckin’ right I am. But I’ve got you on my side. And you’ve got me, too—for all the good that does you.”

“You think you’re good for me?” His voice was lower now—not soft, but husky, heated.

“There’s gotta be something _that_ keeps you hanging around, besides my winning smile and the hope to catch me topless again.”

Lucifer’s laugh was throaty, almost a purr. His eyes drifted down to your lips. Gradually, with all the sinuous ease of a snake coming uncoiled, his own mouth stretched into a smile.

“There is,” he said.

You stared at him, once more surprised by his sudden show of vulnerability. "And that is...?"

“Well for one thing, you don't run screaming at the sight of me. It’s also nice that you don’t cross yourself and start shooting off prayers—as if an Our Father's gonna make a difference.” He rolled his eyes to show what he thought of that. “Hail Mary might, but not many people try that. But you? You don't do either. You’re a strange thing—I turn to you and you don’t turn away. You watch, you wait, you face me.”

“You’ve got a nice face to look at,” you joked.

“Of course I do,” he agreed without hesitation. “But that’s not all of it."

You waited, breath held, heart pounding.

Lucifer's eyes softened, and his expression soon matched. "Do you know how rare it is for me to talk to someone who doesn’t _want_ something from me? Something they’ll lie and cheat and trick and kill to get?”

The tone of his voice was the answer he sought, so you said nothing.

“And you do none of that. All you want is me. My company.” He grinned again. “All my life, from _ab aeterno_ , I’ve had to defend myself, be on my guard for failures and liars and deceivers. People who want what I have and think they can control me. My father, my brothers, even my own children. All those demons pretending to be noble—princes and kings, _knights_.” He let out a dark laugh. “And if they don’t want anything from me, then they spit on what I _do_ have to offer. I’m not sure which is worse.”

“Who thinks that?” you wondered aloud.

Lucifer went very still. “Remember Jack?”

“No.”

“I didn’t tell you about him when you asked before. Guess I could do it now. Better late than never, yeah?”

He sounded almost nervous now, his words tumbling out in a tangled rush. You placed your free hand on his chest, giving it an awkward pat in what you hoped would be a sign of encouragement.

Lucifer closed his fingers around your wrist and brought it up to his mouth. His kiss was quick, just a feather-light press of lips. He lowered your hand, but still held on. “Jack’s my son,” he said, his voice trembling on the final word. “Different than the others—different than any demon. I mean, sure, I wasn’t technically there when he was… conceived, but I was there when he was born. I was there before he was even alive. Heard every little beat of his heart as he grew, no matter who tried to stop it.”

“How?”

His eyes searched your face for a long moment before he replied. “You’re not the only way I can get out and stretch my legs. I can borrow a body or two—like renting a car for a bit.” He waited for the horror to clear off your face before he continued. “The man who made Jack was one of ‘em.”

A flurry of questions buzzed in your head at this new bit of information. You pressed them all to the side, not wanting to interrupting now that he was confessing so much to you.

Lucifer’s eyes grew distant, his thoughts sinking into a memory you could not share. “He didn’t want to be a father. Didn’t want Jack—called him a mistake.” He took a breath; it was a harsh, shuddering sound, and you _felt_ his anger ripple off him in waves. “So I stepped in to do what he couldn’t. I made his mother an offer, no strings attached…” He shook his head. “Point is, I chose to be his father, and he chose to hate me.” He laughed again, a vicious, aching sound, like a wound made audible. “History repeats itself, huh?”

You fell silent, taking all this in. “What about his mother?”

“What about her?”

The careless dismissal, and his perplexed expression, was half the answer you needed. “How does she feel about you?”

“Remember what I said about the screaming and the prayers?” he drawled.

“Yes.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“Ah. Okay.” You paused. "I'm sorry," you said, not knowing what else there was to say.

Perhaps it was your apology that did it. Perhaps it was the sympathy that ached in you, matching every beat of your pulse.

Maybe it was the tears in your eyes as you listened to his story, as you heard the pride and tenderness in his voice when he spoke of his son.

Maybe it was all of these things. Maybe it was none at all. Maybe he was just tired of delaying it any longer.

Whatever the reason, what little space separated the two of you was soon charged, electric and livid, vivid. You sighed, a sound of surrender and want and need all tangled together, and as you drew in a slow breath through your half open mouth, Lucifer reached down, tilted your jaw up with both of his hands, and kissed you.

This was not the gentle, teasing kiss during your game of truth or dare. It wasn’t the slightly awkward fumbling as he learned the shape of your lips, as if kissing and intimacy of all kinds were a memory long buried, gradually returning from either experience or the long study of fascination. No, this kiss—and those that came after—were the caresses of a craving creature, hungry and eager.

Again you swayed on your heels, and again, just as he’d done in the bath, Lucifer lowered his head to follow where you moved, his lips seeking yours. He let out a low growl as he did it, holding your face steady in his hands so that you couldn’t slip away again. This freed something in you, and you savored the sound of his hushed, half-hummed moan as you flicked your tongue gently across his bottom lip.

“You’re no good for me,” he said, his mouth lingering on yours with every word. As you recoiled from his words, he skimmed his teeth across your bottom lip, slowly shaking your head. “I don’t need someone _good._ I need someone better, someone more.”

As you waited for him to continue, a sudden burst of tears rose in your eyes. You did your best to hold them back, but it was a hopeless effort. Your temper and your tear ducts had long ago decided to humiliate you together, tearing you down whenever you wanted to stand tall and fierce.

Lucifer's eyes shifted between your own, watching you struggle not to cry. “Do you really think I’d give my precious time to someone who was just _good_? Someone so little and low?”

“Don’t make jokes about my height,” you grumbled, twisting your head free from his grasp. “It’s not my fault you’ve got long legs and a tall, sturdy frame, okay?”

He slid the tips of his fingers down your neck. On instinct, you lifted your chin, an invitation daring him to do more.

He was more than glad to take the challenge. Naturally. With one hand firmly latched onto your hip, and the other cradling the back of your head, holding you by as much hair as he could grab, Lucifer crushed you to him, bending you back against the press of his body.

“You’re better than good,” he purred. “You’re better and so much worse. I crawl to you, I claw my way free across echoes of agony, up through every layer of choking ash and stone and endless fire. And I do it all because you ask for me. You cry out and I come.” He hummed again, trailing his lips along your neck, right over the steady thump of your pulse. “I don’t do that for anyone. Do you hear me? Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Your voice was barely more than a gasp—and then you _did_ gasp when he kissed your neck, his endless chill crashing against your blood and lust-warmed skin.

“You’re like a hook through my heart. You make me _weak_. And you know what?” He leaned in as he spoke, closer and closer, until you could feel the press of his hips and the slow glide of his knee as he wedged it between your thighs.

“What?” The word barely left your lips.

“I think I like it,” he breathed, straightening so that he could fit his mouth to yours. “And I think I’ll return the favor, give back as much as I get—just as long as you aren’t good. Be better than that, be braver.”

Lucifer lifted his lips off yours and moved them to your brow. The tip of his nose bumped against your forehead as he held his mouth to your skin in a soft, lingering caress. “Can you do that?”

“I can.” Your voice was strong, clear. “I can. I will. I am.”

His smile made your heart ache. It was so clever, so cunning, brimming with pride and love. “That’s my girl.”

The dawn rose in full behind his back, a burning, gleaming triumph against the lingering dark. You heard a faint wind rustling in the trees outside, and clutched at Lucifer as hard as you could, fingers twisting in his shirt, your chest pressed to his chest, heart to heart, bone on bone, blood seeking blood.

“No,” you begged, hearing the wind rise into a roar. “No, no, no—stay with me. Stay. Fight it. _Please._ ”

Tears burned in your eyes as you watched his expression sag with regret. “I’ll come back for you,” he vowed. “I’ll come home. I will. I _will._ ”

And then all too soon, you were alone in your room, your fingers empty, your heart screaming his name—not in prayer, no, and not a war cry either, but in the howl of a Fury blazing in all her wretched, wrathful glory.

You stood there, fists clenched, teeth bared, and let out a wordless scream. You pulled at your hair, clutching it tight, scraping your fingers down your neck. You slammed your fists over your heart, and then turned to do the same on the dresser. It thumped against the wall hard enough to rattle the mirror that hung over it. You watched it slip sideways off the nail, the glass swaying, casting a distorted reflection back to you.

As you stood there, fighting to catch your breath, you thought for a moment that something red flashed in your left eye. Just a little pulse, like blood gushing up out of a wound. You blinked and it was gone.

You closed your eyes and counted back from six in your head. Lucifer wasn't gone for good. He'd come back. You’d bring him back again. You’d gouge his name like a groove into your tongue until it knew no other shape but the twists of his every letter. You’d scream it to the sky if you could, daring heaven itself to stop you. And it couldn’t—it could try, sure, but it would fail.

You would make damn sure of it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning for descriptions of self-injury related violence. Nothing too graphic, though.

Lucifer had lightly doctored the truth during your last conversation. Oh, he still had to crawl and claw his way to your side, yes, but he did that just as much _to_ himself as he made himself _do_.

In short, he made himself suffer just to see you.

Self-injury, like any act of willful mutilation, was a grim necessity. It was pain given purpose, a fuel to a fading inner fire of light and life and courage, all of which could fail at the slightest hint of doubt.

Lucifer was not one to linger long on doubts. It was a useless emotion, wretched, weighty, unsatisfying. Doubt and all its ruinous offspring—worry, frustration, helplessness—had no value at all and thus it deserved no place in his heart. He did his best to tear it out before it could take root. And so each and every time he felt the pull of your prayer—like teeth at his throat, tearing, gnawing; like a hook in the heart, dragging him up from the dark, devouring Deep—he did the same to himself: tore into, uprooted, cleaved. He had to. There was no other way _to_ you.

If music was the first language of all creation, then blood was the first miracle, a magic ingredient demanded by any power. Even angels bled, though they called it ichor (the snobs). The power of your prayer may pull Lucifer up through the winding spirals of Hell, but it was blood and bone— _his_ blood, _his_ bone—that pried apart the Cage’s lock.

Lucifer would never tell you this, though. He never expected you to guess it either. But there was a sort of strange, sickening delight in imagining the look on your face if he ever dared to bare these wounds to you. He thrilled at the thought of rolling up his sleeves and showing you the weals and keloid scrapes set along his arms, in the exact length and shape of his veins—veins he had to pull like a marionettist commanding his puppet. He swallowed back laughter when he pictured the look on your face as he ran your hand along the puckered scars in his left thigh, the _sinistra_ side. Would you wince as he let you trace the puncture wounds collected there, wounds in the exact shape and width of his ringfinger? Would you gasp if he showed you the jagged, pearly pale scars on that finger, the one he had to snap in half and drill into the meat of his leg, letting the blood run down past his calf to pool at his heel and empower his every second step?

It wasn’t your fear that Lucifer imagined, nor did he want it. It wasn’t your horror or disgust that he craved. It was your sympathy, yes, and even your pity. He couldn’t picture how else you would respond to all this violence without your trademark tears—and he loved you for it. He marveled at the thought of your tears. Your sobs of sympathy were like a song, _sirene_ and soothing. Perhaps he shouldn’t like them as much as he did, but he’d never heard someone cry for him before. Not even his brothers wept when he was cast down from heaven. Their silence had been as damning as his father’s final words.

Lucifer wore—and hid—these wounds well. He was no stranger to injury, had suffered as much harm to himself as he had inflicted. He was a war veteran, after all. No soldier leaves a war unscathed, and it was no small effort to get to you, no matter how strong your prayer or dire your need. Perhaps it was easier for other angels, those that still bore the proud stamp of heaven. Perhaps it was the lack of experience he had with the whole thing. Lucifer couldn’t remember the last time anyone had prayed to him as an angel, if it had ever happened at all. He wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. Part of him didn’t care, didn’t _want_ to care—what could he possibly gain from devoting his time to a petty, human need? Another part of him, not quite the prideful part, but something else, something quieter, buried deep, couldn’t help but be offended. Why _wouldn’t_ anyone pray to him, call upon his power and potential, recognize his worth and admire it?

But they didn’t. They didn’t, and you did. And their tremendous loss would be your gain.

 

Easier said than done, sadly.

Lucifer knew he needed help. The trouble was how to ask for it, and finding the someone worthy to ask. Well, someone besides _you_.

The Cage had changed since Lucifer last gave it more than a cursory glance. Someone had redecorated, and he didn’t like it. He wasn’t particularly attached to his prison, but he did have eons to adjust to its first design—and he loathed the idea that someone could have swept down, shaken up the place, and then strolled back out, neat as they pleased.

There were very few people capable of such a thing. They were also the only people Lucifer was sure he _couldn’t_ kill.

_Not for lack of trying, anyway._

Michael and their father were top contenders. But someone had to open the door and hold it for them—someone had to usher them back out before the rest of Hell was aware of their uninvited guests.

The thought made him mad enough to spit blood and teeth—again. Who would do that? Who would be so brave, so stupid?

He laughed. It'd be easier to make a list of demons who  _didn't_ fit that description.

As if it wasn’t bad enough, apparently, to have an endless panopticon perched in Pandemonium. As if it wasn’t bad enough to suspend him in a pit of pure Dark, able to stand but fit to Fall—again. Now this? _This_?

The Cage’s new design, apart from more complicated locks made from the viscera of _shedim_ and what he thought could be the heartstrings of a chimera, were rows upon rows of eyes, milky white and gold. Lucifer’s fingers burned if he tried to crush them—and he tried more than once, of course. A shock went through him each time, skittering through his skin, pulling at his blood, bone, and Grace.

Grace. That precious power, the _only_ power that mattered, that made him what he was: a purloiner of divine glory, the sole survivor of its wrath. He trembled, breathless and aching, each time he felt this power leave him. And after a time he learned to keep his hands to himself, common sense winning out over his stubborn temper.

There was one small thing about the Cage’s change that Lucifer liked: the eyes weren’t everywhere. If he was careful and clever—and of course he was—he might find a way to squeeze by them, pry them apart without doing the same to himself in the process. But he couldn’t do it alone. Without the power of your prayer to guide him like a gossamer thread, Lucifer wouldn’t know which way to go.

How annoying. As if it needing you wasn’t bad enough. And it _was_ bad. It was a weakness, a flaw, a gap in the armor for a knife to slip through. Needing you to escape was worse than hunting down any of his vessels and convincing them to let him in. At least in those situations, Lucifer had acted on his own power, with his own will and want, fully in control no matter how difficult each vessel was. They’d always seen eye to eye in the end, even soft-hearted, stubborn little Sammy Winchester.

But _you,_ awful thing, had all the power here, and you didn’t even care. Didn't even think about it, didn't even try to wield it. All you wanted, apparently, was him.

He should hate that, hate _you_. But he didn’t.

Why didn’t he?

“Yeah, why _don’t_ you?” Meg asked after he had unloaded his thoughts to her, albeit heavily filtered so as not to appear too vulnerable. “She doesn’t seem worth the risk, boss.”

Lucifer said nothing, and he let the silence linger so that Meg might think he was considering her advice. She walked the length of his Cage, her on the outside, him within, keeping pace at his side.

It was rare for Lucifer to have visitors in his Cage; only the most curious or power-hungry of his children ever bothered to make the trip, either to gloat at his weakness or to curry favor for their own greed. Lucifer wasn’t sure what Meg’s reason was for risking the descent. She was one of the rare lesser-ranked demons who had clear, simple motives with a carefully guarded mind, one that even he found hard to always understand.

Lucifer would never pay her the compliment, not unless he thought it could somehow work in his favor, but he always thought of Meg as dependable when needed, and difficult to predict if left to her own devices. Not that he minded this all that much. It was nice to see one of his unfathomably numerous extended family have _some_ character trait besides mindlessly fiendish.

“Give it some time,” he said at last, folding his arms and keeping his eyes low. He counted six steps before he spoke again. “Let’s see what she does with this before we start throwin’ stones, yeah?”

Meg’s face brightened at the word _we_. She tilted her head, her expression pensive, and she flicked her fingers against the bars as she walked. “And what do you want _me_ to do about it?” she asked, her gaze steady and her voice clear.

Lucifer smiled and traced his bottom lip with the side of his finger. He could almost feel her dark, ancient heart lift at the sight of his grin. Her cheeks dimpled as she returned the expression, and for a moment his heart almost broke.

He turned to her, drawing two of his fingers into his palm to gesture her close. He waited, watched, still and patient as Meg took a hesitant step up to the cage, curling both hands around the bars. Lucifer held her gaze for a moment, then another, another—

Gradually, her confusion seeping through, Meg’s smile sagged at the edges.

As quick as a smiting strike of lightning, Lucifer reached out and seized the collar of her black leather jacket. He yanked her forward hard enough to slam her forehead against the bone and metal wall of his Cage.

As her skin collided with the bars, Meg grit her teeth and narrowed her eyes into a furious glare. She knew better than to cry out in pain—she was too proud to do it, too angry.

A part of him was strangely proud at her bared teeth and clenched jaw. She had a fighting spirit, a true soul of rebellion and fury. Shame that it took someone else’s effort to drag it out of her. Shame that she couldn’t freely bring it to the surface.

Shame that she wasn’t you.

The thought made Lucifer's heart ache. For a flash of a second, he didn’t see Meg at all. He saw _you._

Weakened by need, Lucifer’s fingers relaxed, and he snatched his hand back through the bars of his Cage. Meg didn’t move, even though she was free, and the sight of her standing there, frozen, watchful, wary, made something heavy shift in his gut.

Lucifer tilted his head, hoping to offset the sudden weight that gnawed at him. “Word from the wise,” he said, his voice a low, purring promise of a threat, “when you go up there again—and you _will_ go, because I’m telling you to—you’re going to control that temper of yours. Remember what I said the last time?”

Meg nodded, her wavy hair swaying with the movement. “Yes, sir.”

He repeated the advice all the same. “You don’t have to like her, but you _will_ respect her. She’s precious— _useful_ ,”  he added, tightening his lips. Had he said too much? Meg was loyal, yes, but that could turn so easily, especially if she thought he’d gone soft somehow. “One in a million—quite possibly the only human, alive or dead, that I will ever bother to compliment. And I won’t lose her to one of your tantrums. Are we clear?”

Lucifer knew how he sounded: ruthless, efficient, like a general admiring a new weapon for war. He knew better than to hope that what he said to Meg would not find its way back to you. You’d no doubt put her through an inquisition the second she crossed your path, or maybe she’d be in a grumpy mood and provide the information herself. He did, however, hope that you knew _him_ better than to believe he thought so little of you.

He waited until Meg nodded before he spoke again. “I want you to keep an eye on her ‘til I find her again—and I _will_ find her. You’ll tell her that.”

Meg nodded once more, obviously eager. “I will, but…”

Lucifer raised an eyebrow. “But?” he prompted.

“How am I gonna get there?”

“How’d you get there the last time?”

Meg chewed on the edge of her lip, her throat working against the swell of words that his low voice and silken displeasure drew from her throat. “I sorta… snuck in,” she mumbled. “It wasn’t that hard to do. You kind of punched a hole through when you went up first, sir.”

Lucifer didn’t think she was ashamed of it. No, that was _fear_ on her face. He laughed once.

Her face paled at his laughter. “It wasn’t just me,” she continued, so quick to point his ire elsewhere. “I was curious, but there were others who got all pissy. Had torches and pitchforks all prepared.”

“That would explain all the glares she got,” he mused, remembering one of your earlier conversations. Then he reached out and tapped Meg on the nose. “And yet you’re the only one who threatened her.”

He had to give her credit: she didn’t hesitate, didn’t waver. “I stand by what I said. I didn’t know what side she played for, and I still don't.”

“I find your lack of faith disturbing, little one,” he murmured. “I’m not angry—I’m disappointed. Do you really think she could fool _me_?”

Meg hesitated, and Lucifer wondered if her thoughts strayed to the same direction as his were headed. He knew he didn’t have a good track record when it came to trusting people. Rowena, Asmodeus, Dagon, Anael, Crowley; his father, his brothers, Auntie Amara, even those damned idiot Winchesters—traitors, liars, and failures, all of them.

But their betrayals weren't the worst part. No, not at all. The worst part was that he had expected more of them, and they had all let him down.

“Do you?” he demanded, all but growling now.

Meg shook her head. “No, Dad.”

The word broke something free inside him. A strange bitter taste flooded his mouth, and he had to look away from her steady gaze and stern face. Lucifer took a breath and clasped his hands. The tense atmosphere between them scattered at once, and he listened gleefully to Meg’s short, relieved sigh. “So, to sum up: you’re gonna sneak in again, track her down, and keep an eye on her ‘til I’m back on top. I won’t need you anymore after that.”

He held Meg’s gaze long enough to see her squirm, an unusual thing for her. When she did not excuse herself, he decided he would have to do it for her.

“You’re free to go now,” he said, dismissing her. “Shoo.” He waved his hand.

Meg went, sliding into the darkness like a shadow blending into her black home.

Lucifer wasn’t sorry to see her go, but he was sorry to be alone again. After a moment, he let out a long, low sigh. His shoulders slumped, heavy with weariness.

He didn't have time for self-pity, nor would he make it. He had better things to do.

“All right, pal,” he murmured. “This is gonna hurt and hurt bad.” He paused and whispered your name once, twice, using it as a prelude for his next, deepest breath.

With a heavy heart and low-looking eyes, Lucifer held out his left hand and spread the fingers wide. The pale whorls of his slow fading scars glowed in the dim, ever-fading light. He waited a moment, still studying the shape of his once-wounds, before he took hold of his ringfinger, snapped it at the knuckle, and twisted it around until he freed the bone.

The Cage’s locks wouldn’t pick themselves.

* * *

 

With little idea on what to do next, no job to go to, and no idea of what Lucifer endured to find you again, you decided to clean your house. Every inch, every corner, every room, top to bottom—none of it would escape your scrubbing wrath.

There wasn’t much to clean—it wasn’t a large house, more like a tiny cottage tucked at the end of a long, thin road near the woods—but you didn’t keep up with the chores as much as you ought to, so there was always something to do. Just about the only housework you did reliably were the dishes. Nothing said “yuck” like a messy, clogged sink.

After you put on a pot of coffee, you sat down and made a quick list of everything that had to be done. _Laundry, dusting, sweep/mop the floor, remake the bed, clean kitchen._ You sat back and read the list with a groan. All your least favorite things. Yay. At least it’d keep you busy, and hopefully it’d keep you from thinking too hard about all the shit you were trying to distract yourself from in the first place.

And it worked. For the first few hours, anyway. You took your time, moving slowly from room to room, armed with your arsenal of cleaning supplies, singing quietly under your breath. The sun shone merrily through your window as you worked, its golden slat shifting across the floor and along the walls as the hours trudged by. Every now and then you heard a bird squawking in the distance, followed up by long minutes of silence. You wondered if the bird was calling for a friend and listening in the hopes of finding one.

Sometime around eleven, right when your stomach was starting to burn from your ill-advised breakfast of coffee, your thoughts began to drift away from the housework. They landed, as your thoughts always seemed to do these days, on Lucifer. His name was practically worn into your head like the scuffed sole of a well-traveled shoe, like a scar without a wound as its maker.

Thinking his name didn’t make him appear—he wasn’t Beetlejuice. _Sadly_. Just as irreverent and charming, sure, but also not as grotesque. _Or dead._

You sat back on your heels and scowled, peering at the gleaming white tiles of the bathroom floor. Why _didn’t_ thinking about Lucifer make him show up? “Speak of the devil and he shall appear” was an idiom for a reason, albeit not one taken literally anymore. But how were thinking and praying any different? The latter just had names and spirits and angels and heavenly—or hellish—powers attached to it.

So why _didn’t_ thinking Lucifer’s name make him appear?

Maybe you had to be really desperate for the prayer to work. Maybe you had to be at your lowest moment, or some kind of agonizing state, for that wish to transfer into some kind of power, like the last burst of a flame before it fades to the weakest cinder.

After a moment, you shrugged and leaned forward to scrub the tiles even harder. “All powers have some kinda limit, right?” you said, your necklaces jangling together as you moved forward and back, driven by the momentum of your arms. “That’s how it always goes—otherwise it’s just game-breaking deus ex machina shit.”

It was strange to talk about yourself like this, as if you weren’t… well, _you._ You were human, that was clear. But you were capable of something bizarre enough to draw the ire of heaven and the eye of hell. That had to qualify you as something _more_ than normal, at least.

You sighed. “The power of prayer,” you mused. “What am I, the Planeteer with the heart ring?”

You couldn’t help but laugh. You weren’t a cynic, and you wouldn’t exactly say you were averse to any religious expression, but the idea of praying in times of tragedy struck you as just a way to say very little and do even less. And wasn't the best defense a good offense—or was it the other way around? Eh, it didn't matter. You knew you were no fighter. Possessed by a constant compulsion to take down any obstacle in your life, sure, but that fighting spirit never carried over into actual _fighting_ or physical violence.

At least, none ever committed _by_ you. _To_ you was a different story, a sour one of childhood bullying and lost friends and now, apparently, the archangel Michael wanted to join the fray.

Point was: you’d never thrown a punch in your life, even if you knew the mechanics of it, and you really didn’t want to start now. Especially not with something that wasn’t human. The odds were not in your squishy body’s favor.

A bitter taste flooded your mouth. What was the problem, anyway? So you were talking with the devil—big deal. So did Jesus at some point, according to the stories. On the scale of blasphemy, talking to the first rival of heaven probably ranked somewhere below religious hypocrisy, harming the innocent, or getting your church to protest a gay soldier’s funeral.

“Not _that’s_ pure fuckin’ evil,” you grumbled, squeezing the sponge out into the faucet, watching the brown water spiral down the drain. Why didn’t Michael get his halo in a twist about _that_? Nothing you did could possibly compare to that kind of cruelty—not even an actual of casual blasphemy.

And wasn’t that the start of all this? All you did was pray to the one person you thought would listen because heaven wouldn’t give you the time of day. How was heaven’s failure to deliver on its most basic promise _your_ fault? And it’s not like you weren’t willing to listen to the other side. You could just as easily, and _would_ just as gladly, listen to any messenger heaven sent your way, if they even bothered to send one that didn’t threaten to kill you. You might even listen to one now, provided they didn’t slink into your dreams, give you cryptic messages, and talk about how you were a mistake that needed to be burned off the face of the Earth. Not really the best first impression to give someone.

You scowled and sat back once more to survey your work. Your bathroom floor was bright and gleaming, as if it’d never been used. You would be proud of this if your thoughts weren’t still buzzing like a swarm of hornets. You needed a distraction, and you needed one _now._ Preferably before any panic set in as you thought about how helpless you were.

You pressed the heels of your hands into your eyes and sighed, shoulders slumping. “I can’t keep doing this,” you breathed. “I can’t keep doing _nothing_.”

After a moment, you pushed yourself to your feet and went back to your kitchen to cross off the list of chores. At least you were able to accomplish that particular goal.

But what could you do now? You tapped the tip of your pen against the page, leaving little black stabs as you lapsed deep in thought.

A plane flew overhead, lower than usual. It sent rattles through your house, knocking over a few books you kept on the shelf in your living room. With a sigh and a swear, you went over to set them right again.

It was then, peering at the line of books—dusty and yellowed with age—that you got an idea.

The best offense is a good defense—and what better way to defend yourself than to come up with a _plan_? No, not just a plan... but power, prayer—magic, spells.

What you needed was a witch—or, failing that, a librarian who didn't ask questions as you checked out every occult book that the local library could stock. It sounded crazy, but what about your current life could be considered sane? 

Now if only you didn’t have to do this alone. You tucked the last book on the shelf as a sinking feeling slipped into the pit of your stomach, your thoughts growing heavy as a stone. What you wouldn’t give to have someone help you, someone who was cunning and clever, dedicated to survival, someone who could look danger in the eye and spit at it—

_Tap tap tap._

You whirled around, your heart in your throat. Someone was knocking on your door in hard, quick beats. You weren’t expecting anyone, nor could you think of who’d pay a visit and bother to knock. Lucifer had always popped up exactly where you needed him, right at your side.

 _Tap tap tap tap._ The knocks were coming harder now, a clear sign of impatience. You chewed on your lip and crept to the door. It took you two tries to open it.

You only opened the door wide enough to fit half of your face through the slat. “Yes?” you asked—and then you stopped, your mouth hanging open.

A short, dark haired woman with a round face and glittering brown eyes smiled at you. “Hey there, meatsack,” she said cheerfully. “Remember me?”

It was the woman you’d met a month ago, after your first night with Lucifer. You scratched through your memory for her name. Surely Lucifer had told you it once before, even in passing.

“… Meg?” you guessed.

“The one and only,” she replied, still grinning.

Ignoring all your tense nerves and better judgment, you opened the door a little wider and peered around. She was alone. Your heart sank for the tiniest moment, and you tried not to frown.

One of her eyebrows arched high. “You gonna let me in?”

“Why should I?”

“Because you asked for help and I’m here to give it.” Her reply was like the knocks on the door: short, sharp, precise.

“Lucifer sent you?”

Meg interpreted your surprise as the invitation she’d been looking for. She stepped forward and brushed passed you, gently shouldering you out of the way as she marched into your house. “Sure did, kiddo,” she said.

You frowned. _Kiddo_?

You closed the door and turned to watch her, your hands hanging limp at your side.

Meg rolled her eyes at your hesitation. “Introduction, take two,” she said, and held out her hand.

After a moment, you took it. Her grip was firm and warm.

“We got off on the wrong foot, but I’m not sorry.”

“Oh. Okay?” You chewed your lip and pulled your hand free. “So I guess you know about… about him and me,” you said, stumbling over his name.

Meg waggled her eyebrows and laughed. “I know enough,” she said, and it was difficult to read both her expression and tone. She seemed confused, and eager to hide that with an air of indifference. “One thing’s pretty clear: you’re my god’s ticket out of his prison, so as far as I’m concerned, as long as you do that, we’re good.” She tapped her knuckles against her chest and then did the same to yours. "We're blasphemy buddies, you and me. Sinful sisters, or some dumb shit like that."

Was this her attempt at calling a truce? You folded your arms and watched her carefully, sinking into a heavy silence. “Is that what he wants?” you asked, straining to keep the hurt from your voice. "Is that why you're here, to make sure I can let him out again?"

Meg lifted her shoulder in a half-shrug, the picture of nonchalance. “More or less,” she said, using the same phrase Lucifer did when he wanted to be coy and deflect from any real answer. “He said something about keeping an eye on you and how important you were and blah blah,” she made a little mouth with her hand and mimed it chattering. “I only heard what I needed to hear: Dad needed someone to trust, and I could be that someone. So here I am.”

“I guess I should thank you.”

“A little gratitude couldn’t hurt, especially since he’s got me playing bodyguard. A meatshield for a meatsack,” she scoffed. “That’s new; I’m the one people’s bodies usually need guarding _from_. So do me a fave and make it easy for me, okay?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re excused,” she said, and marched over to your couch to lounge on it. She grinned at you and stretched her legs out on the cushions, not even bothering to take off her shoes. “But seriously, word to the wise? Lay low and listen to me. Duck when I catch a bead on you, jump when I say to jump, and for the love of all that's unholy, _don't argue_. An angel blade through your skull would be a total waste of your face.”

You spent the new few moments trying to figure out if this was a compliment or an insult. You glanced around the room, as if the target she described were something you could see. “You make it sound like I shouldn’t leave the house.”

Meg shook her head. “Stickin’ to one spot usually isn’t a good idea when you’re being hunted, kiddo.”

“So what should I _do_?” you asked, resisting the urge to stomp your foot. A flood of warmth rushed through your gut, twisting it in sharp bramble tangles. Tears swelled up in your eyes, dissolving Meg’s face into a watery smear. “You’re here to help me, right? So _help_ me!”

Meg’s eyes widened as she watched you slowly come undone on your living room floor. You knew you were crying, knew it and hated it, but you couldn't stop. You tried to clear your eyes of tears, but they were determined to be free. All the long weeks of confusion and anger and a strange, aching longing now broke out from your carefully laced control.

You buried your face in your hands and then tore your nails across your scalp, pulling at your hair. “I’m tired of this,” you mouthed. “I’m so… so fucking tired.”

And in that moment, your weakest since the night you first called to Lucifer, you felt your heart tear open, as if your grief and your need were a combined cruel coroner performing a live autopsy. You pressed a hand to your chest and bowed forward, surprised that there wasn’t blood under your fingertips. You were so sure you were bleeding out, gutted and gaping, aching, with the patches of your skin frayed over your exposed, tender ribs.

You curled your shaking fingers into a fist and slammed them against your heart. Again and again, harder each time, until you were wincing both from the anticipation of the blow and the result of it.

How nice it would be if your hurt were something you could hammer back into your skin, flattening it until it dissolved to dust. You wanted it to stop—the pain and the confusion, the tears and the reason for it. You wanted your life to go back to how it was before that night, before that prayer, before Lucifer had ever set eyes on your face. Sure, that life and the woman who lived it was dreary and draining and dull, but at least it was _safe._  You wished for this with all the force your bleeding heart could muster—

And you failed. You opened your eyes, half expecting to see Meg disappear. But there she was, still sitting on your couch. Her face was torn between disgust and discomfort, as if you had exposed yourself.

Not even Lucifer had seen you come apart like this. And it made sense, in some odd way, to show this side of yourself to Meg, to the woman who had cheerfully threatened you with violence. Maybe she’d rethink that decision after seeing the kind of violence you could inflict on yourself.

Your heart wasn’t the only victim to your prayer’s failure to take fruit. Your body joined in the suffering, and a jolt of pain lanced through your forehead. You buckled from the force of it, pressing one hand to your face and squeezing your eyes shut again.

Carefully, slowly, mindful of the jagged edges that you swore were torn into your chest, you took in a short, shallow breath. The air stung your lungs like the first gasp on a winter night, all teeth and frost.

You opened your eyes just in time to catch Meg’s expression shift from genuine, frightened horror into a mask of indifference. “You all right over there, ol drippy?” she asked.

Something warm and wet slid over your upper lip. You pressed your fingers to it, and then lifted them up to see a small blush of blood sticking to the tips.

Before you could respond, Meg pushed herself off the couch and walked briskly into the kitchen. She returned with a few napkins and thrust them into your free hand, careful not to touch you.

“Here,” she said, her voice oddly gruff. “Plug up that leak.”

“Thanks,” you mumbled, your voice thick. You kept your eyes on Meg’s own as you dabbed at your nose, noting how her own gaze narrowed in on your left eye. You wondered if it flashed red again.

You wondered what that meant.

You wondered why that didn’t scare you.

But most of all—and most importantly—you wondered what Lucifer would say when he found out.

 _Maybe he's growing on me—on me, in me,_ you thought, and you felt your lips spread into a slow, warm smile. Maybe he wasn't as far away as you thought.


	7. Chapter 7

You didn’t feel safe, not even with Meg as your babysitter-bodyguard, and this thought gnawed on you like teeth.

You didn’t feel safe because no matter who was on your side, no matter who was set to guard you, you _weren’t_ safe—and you could think of no way to change that.

The only thing your brain could focus on was what needed to stop, but not how to stop it. You had to stop scrambling in the dark, eager for an answer that would not come unless some cosmic force felt like being cryptic that night. You had to stop waiting on dream visions to drag the thread of your life along at someone else’s mercy, especially since mercy was not something to expect, let alone hope for, as far as your current situation was concerned. No, whatever mercy you were likely to find would only come from Lucifer himself, and that brightly shining darkness wreathing his impossibly tender heart.

Devil he may be to others, but he was far from it with you.

Sure, there was your earlier resolution to come up with a plan to defend yourself, but Meg’s sudden arrival and your weepy breakdown threw a spanner into the works before things could even get started. Knowing you had to plan something did not, of course, lead to a plan being made. All you felt was the frustration of a blocked mind with dwindling patience.

On the third day of Meg’s guard duty, you broke the silence between you two, and mentioned a small portion of these worries to her. Naturally, her response left a little to be desired.

“This is the last thing I wanna hear,” she sighed, rolling her eyes. She picked up the TV remote and jabbed the Mute button. “Look—talk like that is for suckers, okay?”

“What talk?” you asked, frowning at her. You tapped her legs so you could pass by; her feet were propped on the coffee table, and you were once again stress cleaning the already gleaming wood floors.

Meg waited until she had your full attention before she replied. “The ‘I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing-but-I-know-something-has-to-be-done’ thing. That’s the kinda crap people say before they walk right into trouble—and you’re already in enough trouble as it is.”

You stared at her, your jaw clenched tight. “That’s my _point_ , Meg.”

She shrugged. “And it’s mine, too. So leave well enough alone, kiddo! Kick back, relax, do nothing. How hard can it be to _do nothing_?”

You tightened your hold on the broom and slammed the bristles against the legs of the couch, as if trying to shake free the fury that you felt. “Because somewhere out there Michael and god knows who else—no pun intended—are gunning for me. _They’re_ planning, _they’re_ doing something, and it doesn’t make sense that we’re not doing the same. I might be some squishy little human, but I’m not stupid.”

“No, you aren’t stupid. But you’re reckless, and _that_ makes you stupid.”

“No, I’m not.”

Meg’s laugh came out as a snort. “Uh, yeah you are, honey.”

You continued to frown at her, not understanding.

She held up a finger. “You’re talkin’ to a demon right now,” she said, then lifted another finger and wiggled them back and forth. “You _slept_ with Lucifer—and yeah, yeah, you’re gonna tell me _It wasn’t like that_ ,” she imitated your voice in a mocking sing-song, and you had to admit it was an eerily good impression, “but that doesn’t change the fact that you did it.”

You kept your head down and swept yourself away from Meg, careful to keep your eyes turned away from her so that you couldn’t see the look she was giving you. She unmuted the TV, and you let the sudden return of local news drift down into background noise for your riotous thoughts.

“The special election is only two weeks away, and city council candidate, Richard Roman, is polling in a clear lead,” you heard the anchorwoman say, her voice prim and succinct. “He will be visiting the town library over the weekend to discuss increased funding and support for libraries and the educational system.”

You peered at the TV, your interest piqued. _The library…_

Meg chuckled under her breath as the news cut to a clip of Roman addressing a crowd. “ _I Trust Dick_ —really?” she laughed, pointing at the bright red and white signs held up by his supporters.

You couldn’t help but smile. “You gotta admit, it grabs your attention.”

But Meg wasn’t listening. Her expression quickly changed from amusement to suspicion as the anchorwoman stopped talking, and the clip of Roman’s speech began to play. Her dark eyes narrowed as she listened to Roman speak.

“There’s something about that guy I don’t like,” she said once the story finished, switching over to the local weather forecast.

“I don’t know enough about him to have an opinion,” you said, your thoughts still focused on the plan you were slowly cobbling together. “Hey, Meg…?”

“Listening.”

You chewed on the inside of your cheek. “I know you said I should do nothing, but you _also_ told me you wanted this job to be easy for you.”

“Yeah…?”

“So, I was thinking…”

She propped her feet up on the coffee table again. “Don’t leave me in suspense.”

“I was thinking that this would go only easier for you if I can help out in some way.”

“What about ‘doing nothing but laying low’ is hard for you to understand?” she demanded.

“It’s not that I don’t understand it. I just don’t like it and I don’t want to do it.”

Meg leaned her head back on the couch and groaned. “Ugh. _Fine_. What’s the plan, Stan? What’s the goal, Joel?”

You knelt to scoop up the dust and dirt, what little there was, and carried it gently into the kitchen. “Why don’t we head to the library and do some research?” you suggested, tilting the dust bin into the garbage.

“Uh, why?”

“I don’t like stumbling around in the dark. There’s gotta be some books that talk about… about angels and dream visions and that kind of stuff.” You paused, hardly able to believe what you were saying—and _you_ were the one saying it. “Maybe there’s some kind of magic we can do, too…? Lucifer drew this symbol for me once, and things went okay for a while after that.”

“What kind of symbol?” Meg asked, her expression alert.

“I don’t know; he didn’t say. He just carved it into a pumpkin and left it to rot on my stoop.”

“He did what?”

“So what do you think?” you prompted, returning to the subject at hand. “About research?”

Meg considered this. “I wouldn’t mind getting out of this house,” she mused. “No offense but I’m not really the shut-in hermit type. Didn’t think you would be, either. Don’t you have friends to visit? Or a job?”

“Lucifer brought that up too,” you complained, shaking your head. You didn’t want to think about your current isolation or the loneliness that it brought. “But I don’t see why that matters. They can’t help me, and I definitely don’t want them to get roped into this crazy shit. And besides, you told me to lay low. How’s going outside to revive my social life gonna accomplish that?”

“Don’t get so mad. I like winding you up, so sue me.” Meg smiled, unrepentant and loving it. “But you do have a point. Knowledge is power and all that—and I’m pretty sure there _are_ some spells or hexes to make it harder for the folks upstairs to find you.”

“Really?” you asked, your spirits lifting. This was the first bit of good news you’d heard in days, ever since you and Lucifer last spoke.

“Sure. I’d need to double check how to do it though, so I guess that’s where your library idea comes in. Witchery’s not really my thing. But I dunno if we’d find anything _here_ ,” she continued. “Not unless you don’t mind wishing up some grimoires and old lore outta thin air.” She blinked, her eyes widening. “Hey, does your wish power thingy work for food? I could go for a burrito bowl right now.”

“I’d really rather not waste it on…” you cut yourself off as your stomach let out a furious growl.

Meg grinned. “Never ignore an organ when it starts talkin’,” she said, wagging her finger.

You sighed. “I’ll treat you to lunch the normal way, but if and _only_ if you let me come with you.”

“Do you got a death wish or something? Because funerals are pretty pricey.”

Your next words came out in a rush, as impulsive as a kneejerk. “You want Lucifer free just as much as I do, right?” you demanded, and did not wait for her to respond. “And I bet you’re itching for a fight—just like me.”

“Can you even throw a punch?” Meg asked, appraising you with obvious criticism.

You folded your arms across your chest and shrugged, refusing to take the bait. “But hey, if you’d rather hide here then I guess I can’t blame you. Especially if you don’t think you can take on whatever halo-wearing jerk comes our way.”

Meg went very still. She eventually lowered her feet to the floor and sat up straight, her glare dagger sharp and ice cold. “You callin’ me a coward?”

“No, but I _am_ thinking it.”

You knew you were taking a risk. Bruising a demon’s pride had as much a chance to backfire as it was to go your way, but you had a hunch that Meg’s ego would want to redeem itself, and that that desire would win out over her violent temper. Still, it wasn’t in your nature to be vicious or cunning. Clever, maybe. Clever, with a tendency to anger when you were frightened, sure—but Meg was on your side. Temporarily. And as long as you counted her as your only ally, you couldn’t justify hurting her.

The seconds ticked by anxiously. You waited, more nervous than impatient, until Meg pushed herself to her feet, clapped her hands on her thighs and nodded.

“Get your coat and keys, kiddo. We’re going on a field trip.”

You let out a long breath, relieved.

“But!” she added, jabbing a finger at you. “Don’t expect me to scrape you off the sidewalk if someone comes to smite you.”

“I didn’t expect you to.” You smiled at her. It was a weak little thing, tentative, but still struggling to hope. “You’ll keep me safe, right?”

Your smile and your tone caught Meg off guard. She blinked at you, her eyebrow arching up briefly. “You’ll be safe as houses with me,” she said at last, her words stilted. Clearly she wasn’t used to giving out reassurances, but that didn’t matter. What mattered is that she’d even bothered to try.

Who knew that a demon could be so kind?

 

After you and Meg survived lunch, you set off to the library together. The drive across town was a quiet affair—quiet as in no one tried to run you off the road or smash through your windshield to strangle you. As Meg kept up a steady complaint about the terrible reception on your radio (“Where’s all this static _coming_ from?”), you squared off against your nerves, hoping to settle them down for good. Or at least for the rest of the day.

Apart from the glaringly obvious threat on your life, you had no reason to be afraid. You’d used a library before, and as far as social interactions went, libraries were the best places for introverts like you. No one _wanted_ you to talk to them, no one wanted to talk to you, and at most you had to say three words to the receptionist as you checked out your books.

_See? Easy, peasy, perfect._

But you still couldn’t relax. Your tummy was like a furnace, hot and churning as it gnawed on a fresh batch of jangling nerves. More than once you pressed your fist into your side, hoping to distract from the one pain by applying some outside pressure.

Your eyes strayed more than once to the rear view mirror. Your gaze lingered in the glass, checking your left eye. Relief struggled with disappointment each time you saw that your eye was normal again. Where had the red gone? Why had it come at all?

 _Just one more thing to look up_ , you thought, letting out a long sigh. The list of things you needed answers for—the list of things you were likely never to _find_ an answer for—was getting longer every damn minute.

Meg shot you a sharp look, undoubtedly thinking the sigh was meant for her. To your surprise, she didn’t say anything, and you wondered when her storage of words would come flooding open. Probably at the library, the last place where she _should_ be talking.

This silence between you two continued as you entered the library. As a burst of heat blasted you from the ceiling fans, you perked up and felt a smile slip across your face. At least you’d be comfortable.

“What’s the scheme, Jean?” Meg asked, eyeing the brightly colored papers stapled to the cork board by the door.

“I walk over to that computer,” you said, pointing at it as you spoke, “look up as many books about monsters and magic and hell as I can find, and hope some goth hasn’t already come in to read them, too.”

“And what do you want _me_ to do?”

“Stand around and look pretty?”

Now it was Meg’s turn to sigh.

“Pretty _and_ menacing,” you amended.

She gave you a hearty thumb’s up. “Now we’re talking.”

“And now we’re not,” you said, catching the baleful glare of the head librarian.

After spending ten fruitless minutes on the computer, ignoring all the YA supernatural romance books that popped up in your search, you decided you'd have to do this the hard way. You took your time searching through the shelves, sticking to the non-fiction section. Every now and then Meg would pry a book off the shelf and flip through it with a scowl before tucking it back into the open space. The third time this happened, you turned to her with an expectant look.

“I recognize some of these names,” she said, pointing to the shelves. “Some of them were on our side once.”

“What do you mean?”

“Heaven’s got prophets, right?”

“They do?”

Meg stared at you.

“I guess that’s a yes,” you mumbled, processing this new bit of information. It wasn’t _entirely_ new, though. You knew enough about Christian lore to knew that there were a few prophets scattered around its backstory—some of them lifted shamelessly from the Old Testament, at that. You also knew enough about the weird rituals of Catholicism to safely assume that some saints were regarded as fondly and intensely as prophets themselves.

Meg nodded and tilted her head back to read the titles on the topmost shelf. “They’ve got theirs, and we’ve got ours. And I’m probably biased but I’d say ours get the better end of the deal.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because _our_ prophets don’t die young or martyred. They live long, delightfully blasphemous lives, hiding in plain sight, passing information from one generation to the next.” She paused. “Well, most of them.”

“And the rest?”

“Their conscience grows like cancers and doubt eats away at them.” She shrugged, the edge of her lips twisting up at the left side. “I’ll never understand why you humans spend so much time on worry and regret. You did what you did. Sometimes you pay for it, sometimes you don’t. Your lives are short and miserable enough already, so why add to it?”

“Sometimes we can’t help it,” you said, thinking of yourself. “Our lives are short and miserable and we’re all aware of it. Some of us can’t cope with that.”

Meg’s eyes darted to your face, her expression wary. You wondered if she was thinking of your breakdown, and if she would have to sit through a repeat of it any time soon. “You seem to be holding up all right, sweetmeat,” she said, her tone chipper.

You laughed through your nose. “Hardly. I’m the one who prayed to Satan for help, remember? Ouch— _hey_!” you cried, drawing your arm back from the hard pincer grip of Meg’s fingers.

“Keep your voice down,” she hissed, peering meaningfully over your shoulder. You took her unspoken advice and did not turn to look at whoever she saw—perhaps it was the head librarian again. “And don’t call him that,” she added. “That’s not his real name.”

“But it is one of his names, right?” you mumbled, rubbing your arm, wondering if it would bruise.

“Is that the name you used when you prayed to him?”

“No.”

“Then why say it now, or ever?” Meg shook her head. “Real names are precious— _his_ name especially. Don’t go throwing it away for a chance to tell a cheap joke.”

The last thing you expected from Meg was a lecture about politeness. Her disapproval stung worse than you expected. “I didn’t know,” you said, your voice low.

“And now you do.”

You thought this over as you watched Meg’s clouded expression clear into a look of triumph. She darted up on her toes and dug out a book from the top shelf. You caught a glimpse of its name as the book tumbled into her hands: _Myths, Monsters, and Magical Miscellany_.

“Any names I should look out for?” you whispered.

“I’ll know ‘em when I see ‘em,” Meg said, clearly happy to be in charge. You thought back to your earlier joke of standing around and looking pretty and held in another bitter laugh. Looks like that was _your_ job.

Once again, there was nothing you could do. Once again, nothing was all you _could_ do. All you could do was stand around, waiting for something to happen, watching as someone else took charge.

You hated this. Hated it. When would it stop?

Still sulking, you stepped slowly up and down the aisles with Meg in the lead, your eyes lifting and lowering to scan titles and author’s names. There was no pattern to which books she chose and which she tucked back on the shelf; no two authors’ names were the same, and she picked up just as many new books as she did older ones. Eventually she had a large enough collection that you had to hold some of the books as well.

“I’m going to start picking through these,” you said as one of the muscles in your left arm began to twitch.

Meg tapped her fingers across the faded red lettering of her latest choice ( _Sex Magic: The Olde Arte of Desire_ ). “You sit right where I can see you,” she said, nodding to the nearest empty table. “And if you need me, shout.”

“I’m not going to yell in a library.”

“I don’t think you should worry about causing a scene when there’s people gunnin’ for your life.”

You frowned. “Remember what you said earlier? About humans worrying too much?”

“Yeah?”

You leaned forward, ignoring the topmost book in your arms as it wobbled. “ _You’re not helping._ ”

Meg grinned. “Happy readin’,” she said, giving you a little salute.

You sat down at the table closest to Meg just as a low rumble of thunder unfurled overhead. You glanced up at the skylight windows. A dark thatch of clouds congealed in the sky, closing over the pale sun and turning its light wan and gray. It looked like rain—no, worse than rain. It looked like a storm.

You shivered into the limp, well-worn cushioned chair and tensed from your shoulders to your thighs, waiting for the next clap of thunder. It’s not that you were afraid of storms or lightning, but the dreadful anticipation of sound and fury set you teetering ever closer to the edge you were already perched precariously upon. Being at home in a storm was one thing, but being out in public? Horrible, just horrible. What if the lights went out? You peered around at the surprisingly crowded library, trying not to catch anyone’s eye. Which one of them would use the cover of darkness to strike?

Galled at your paranoia, and a little alarmed at how convincing it was to believe that an attack could come at you at any time, you pulled the closest book over to you— _The Arbatel of Magick—_ and flipped through the first few pages. The minutes passed in silence, and eventually you relaxed long enough to actually take in the information you were reading.

What you hoped to find was some explanation not just for whatever was happening to you, but what powerful entity might be in charge of giving you this power in the first place. You'd never had it before, and couldn't understand how something like making prayers come true would just so happen to be something you and you alone could do.

Another growl of thunder unfurled in the sky as you set your phone down on the table, opened the Memo pad app, and quickly typed in a few cursory notes about whatever caught your eye.

_Olympick spirits—declare Destinies, used in ritual magic. Often invoked with the archangels, and work to “please God.”_

_Rulers of the 196(?) provinces of the universe. Why 196? 1+9 = 10. 10 + 6 = 16?_

_Is 16 special? 1+6=7???? Seven sins, seven virtues, seven seals—Seventh Heaven? ~~Bad show.~~_

  * _“Och,” the alchemist, magician—rules the “Sun.” Connection with Michael?_



_Other spirits and their angels: Anael/Hagith, Raphael/Ophiel, Gabriel/Phul, Castiel/Aratron, Samael/Phaleg, Zadkiel/Bethor._

You read the angels’ names over again. Gabriel seemed familiar. The others were new to you, and Samael kept drawing your attention until your curious look deepened into a scowl. Thaat named was far too sinister, and Zadkiel didn’t sound particularly friendly, either. None of the names did, not even ol’ Raphael, whose name forced you to suppress a laugh as you thought of your childhood fascination with _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_.

Had Lucifer ever mentioned other angels before? You scoured your memory with all the laser focus of your stress-cleaning tendencies, eager for something to burst free.

_Inokian (sp?). Leviathan._ _Jack?_

Those seemed like good places to start, though you had no idea what to expect from any of them.

There was no entry in _The Encyclopedia of the Eldritch_ for “Inokian,” nor any plain Jack (though you did find something called  _Springheel Jack,_ but that didn't fit anything Lucifer had told you). Eventually you turned to the entry on “Leviathan.”

_Hebrew sea monster, ref.: Job 41, Psalms 74:14. Assoc. with the Devil in Isaiah 27:1. Named the enemy of Babylon. Primeval creature in company with Tiamat, Lotan, Tannin, Chaoskampf, Vrtra, and Jormungandr of global mythologies._

That sounded eldritch all right, in good company with Lovecraftian horrors and other terrors of the unknowable dark and deep.

 _Leviathan._ You shivered as you stared at the accompanying picture of a coiled serpent, massive and sleek, twined in all the sinuous twists of smoke. Its jaws were open wide, eager to devour, and its eyes were as dark as a night without stars. Even the name sounded creepy, and you didn’t doubt any encounter with the dreadful thing would live up to the eeriness of its name, especially if its bones were used as part of Lucifer’s cage. What kind of power lurked in a monster whose body could be used to _imprison an angel_? How lethal was this kind of creature?

Whatever it was, you weren’t sure it had anything to do with you and your current situation. You doubted it was intelligent enough to be the thing Meg was so sure had its sights on you. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing capable of such a plan, much less able to pull the strings. A Leviathan was a weapon to inflict upon enemies at the command of some higher power—but what? Heaven was the likeliest suspect, despite the entry noting its connection to the devil. Clearly lies, that—unless this was diluted information, a distortion of the truth.

You shut the book with a snap and sighed. Lucifer would know. Lucifer could help you. But he didn’t seem able to do that right now—or perhaps he didn’t want to.

This thought was as jarring as a lightning strike. You bolted up in your chair, eyes wide, heart aching. What if this was a test? What if he was keeping himself from you until you proved your worth in some way? What if he wanted you to learn as much as you could, raising questions, demanding answers, instead of having to teach you himself?

What if he wanted you to learn as much as you could not just for your own safety, but his as well?

You leaned forward, bowing under the jolt of a sudden, needling pain. Lucifer had said you were like a hook in his heart, and though you hadn’t realized it at the time, you knew now that he was the very same for you. His presence, and the craving you felt for it, was a violent emotion, like a knife through the ribs, spilling love from your heart like blood.

_I have to be better than good. Be better and worse, and brave._

You shot a glance over to Meg. She _said_ that Lucifer sent her here to keep an eye on you, to guard you—but what if there was another reason for it? Sure, she had put up a fight whenever you mentioned wanting to do some research of your own, but that could be part of the test, to see how dedicated you were to the cause. The thought gnawed at you, cankerous and cruel. What right had he to test you? What right did he have to leave you like this, struggling in the dark, just to see how long it took for you to give up?

 _Trust Lucifer,_ the man in your dream had said. Trust him love, him—and let him love and trust you in return.

And what good was trust if it wasn’t put to the test? What worth did faith have at all if it never had to fight against fear and doubt?

Still, this whole thing seemed too tilted to you. How could you give this lesson back to him? And you _would_ give it back to him, you had to, you must. No matter how fond you were of him, no matter how much he made your heart sings and your nerves tingle, wild and electric, you weren’t about to let him accomplish such things without some effort. He had to earn the power he had over your body, just as you would damn well prove you deserved any claim over him.

A blinding white flash of light burst across the table from the skylight, startling you out of your thoughts. The storm had rolled in entirely now, and sheets of rain battered the roof in hard waves, plinking off the metal like pebbles.

You looked around. The white light you’d mistaken for lightning was coming from the entryway. A cluster of reporters were gathered around a tall man in a suit, armed with a winning smile that showed off a set of white teeth. He shook the hand of the head librarian, who had wandered over for a greeting.

You frowned. Yes, that’s right. That city council guy, Dick Roman, was supposed to pay the library a visit today.

You watched as the men leaned in close. Whatever the librarian said made Roman’s expression perk up. His gaze, sharp and dark, turned your way. You cringed. _Please don’t tell me he wants a photo op._

Just then, Meg stomped over to you, dumping the books on the table. “We gotta get out of here,” she said.

You frowned. “Why?”

She shot a pointed glance over to Roman and his adoring crowd. “Remember how I said I didn’t like that guy?”

“Yeah…?”

“Well I’m gonna upgrade that dislike to loathing.”

“Why?” you asked again.

Meg took your hand and pulled you to your feet. “Dunno. Instinct, a gut hunch? He makes my skin crawl—and that makes _me_ want to tear off his.”

You stared at her, bile rising from your gut to burn the back of your throat. There was something Meg wasn't telling you. Was she afraid? The thought made your blood run cold. What could scare a demon?

“Then we gotta bolt. Now.”

Curious, you chanced another glance over to Roman. He was walking over to you now, that wide smile still on his face. As he came closer, you noticed the color of his eyes, and for a moment, just a moment, you thought they flashed black, colorless, pupilless, an endless, devouring gaze.

 _Leviathan._ But no, he couldn’t be—not unless they could walk around in vessels, too.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” he said, his voice wooden with its forced gallantry.

Before you could respond, Meg bared her teeth at him. “Drop dead,” she said.

Your hand twisted in Meg’s grip. She did not let go. Instead, she squeezed your hand hard enough so you could feel the tremble of her fingers, and she pulled you into the shelter of the nearby shelves, ignoring Roman entirely.

Daringly, stupidly, you looked over your shoulder. Roman didn’t look surprised at Meg’s outburst or your sudden departure. He was smiling, but in a different way from his earlier grin. This was a leer, a wordless threat, like a wolf closing in on his chosen prey animal.

A shiver convulsed down your spine, cold and sharp.

The only way out of the library, besides the main doors, was the Fire Exit—the very same one Meg was leading you to. You braced yourself for the shriek of the siren once she hit the doors. It blared overhead, shrill and demanding, an echo of the scream you strangled in your throat.

* * *

Somewhere far, far away, deep in the ancient and buried Dark, Lucifer knelt on the brimstone and sighed your name. He heard the hammering of your heart like a second pulse keeping time with his own, and the sound of it thrilled him, chilled him, not with fear or doubt, no, but with the cold heat that fueled him. Him, a dark thing still divine, a dark thing devoted to you and you alone.

But you were frightened. He knew the beats of your heart, could hear the difference in how it raced and why. This was the sound of your fear, a feeling he would gladly chase from your heart like a hunter bearing down his prey. Like a cleaving hand, he would tear all traces of fear from your memory, if he could.

 _Fear not,_ his kin always said whenever they terrified humans with their presence.  _Never fear,_ he wanted to tell you— _would_ tell you, when he saw you again. Over and over would he whisper this against your lips, pressing it into his kisses. _Never fear, not once, not ever._

“Be brave,” he said, his fingers sinking into the smoldering, ruined earth as he steadied himself back on his feet. Every step was agony, and crawling was worse and more pain besides, but he would do it all over and over again in your name, and the hope of you that grew beneath the hurt. “Be brutal and beautiful and brave.”

He spoke knowing in some way you would hear him—perhaps not his words, not exactly, but the echo of their feeling, for you were both its maker and target.

“Be bad for me,” he sighed with a smile, and for the first time in all his long, lonely years of life, his heart filled with something stronger than pride. He thought it might be love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapter isn't so shippy jdkfajsdl i realized, with all the chapters i have left, that i better include some plot intrigue in here, so i'm sry if this pacing is all janky and weird. oh well, it's not like i'm aiming for a nobel prize here.


	8. Interstice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *makes a vague handwave towards canon and how much I'm gonna mix it around and pick and choose some lore stuff*

Angels seldom dream. They may stray into them when strings need to be pulled. They _understand_ them, but it is an understanding that comes with all the distance of an audience in an operating theater.  
  
Demons lack the imagination to dream. They remember them, vaguely, as through a glass of smoke and fog, but it hardly holds their attention. Might as well ask a toddler to sit quiet and reflect.  
  
Lucifer dreamed, though he hardly knew why. Faulty wiring, perhaps. Just one more flaw that bled through the wound of the Mark. Or maybe it was out of sheer boredom. Eternal damnation was bad enough. Might as well have _some_ fun with it.  
  
To the point: Lucifer dreamed of you in the shelter of his sleep. You were the apple of his eyes, and he hid you—the thought of you, the need of you—in the shadow of his wings.  
  
At least, he thought it was you. Thought, hoped. But the dream—you—was a you that wasn’t you. Your face, your voice, your body, yes those were a direct match, but possessed by a strangeness far beyond usual human quirks.  
  
He dreamed of you as the sole, solitary, somber tender to a beloved’s grave. He dreamed you dressed in black, veiled, with a heart too heavy to weep. He dreamed you as a griever, eating ashes of a dead love, dedicated entirely to your Artemisian mourning.  
  
He wondered what it was that you had loved so much, wondered as well why the dream would not supply this directly. It was _his_ mind, after all. Who else could know him better than himself?  
  
(Who? How? And why not?)  
  
Lucifer also wondered why he wanted you mourning at all. To dream was to wish was to want, which was as near to praying as something approaching the divine could get. So why did he dream to see you this way? True, there was very little separation between love and pain besides a razor-thin divide. But that didn’t mean he wanted to see it. Bad enough to believe it.  
  
_Maybe it’s not a dream. Must be something else._ And what better place for a nightmare than a place with no light, no light?  
  
There was another dream of you, odder than the first. Odder than even the most farcical nonsense he witnessed among his own small-minded, clutching, clawing children.  In these dreams—for they were dreams, they had to be: you weren’t in pain—you were like a woman from a fairytale. A Vasilisa, an Alice, a Beauty, bold and brave in the deep, dark woods, never resting until you had your taste of adventure and came out cleverer for it. You were a Marya Morevna, warden to a god you buried like a secret, a man whom death could not touch. She kept him a prisoner to her love, and the god was happy to accept.  
  
Lucifer thought there might be some merit to this belief, besides the fact that it was his idea. Ai was a word of love in some tongues. Ai was also a cry of grief. Even humans couldn’t separate the two—love, pain. Even the root of passion was _pati_ , suffering. So why should he?  
  
And so, he dreamed you, and wondered—feared, _hated_ —if in the end, that’s all you were: born from a wish, built to fade like mist in the morning light. If that were true, then when would he wake up? Would he? _Should_ he?  
  
No. Why should he? Didn’t he deserve this one, small thing? Didn’t he deserve you?  
  
And how could he go back, after all this?  
  
No. That was the wrong question. There was no after. There was his life before you, there was the now, the during, with you, but the after was a blank, gaping space, a shadow where no light could bear to be.  
  
Not even him.  
  
(Especially not him.)

He groaned. "For the love of Dad, _lighten up_." And he would. Probably. Eventually. If he saw you again.

 _When_. When he saw you. Again, and again, and again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter's short, and I'm sorry! I just wanted to post it to let you know that (1) I'm working on the fic again, (2) I am so sorry for the long delay, (3) I'm still incapable of writing straightforward normal romance, (4) I really like the idea of Lucifer having a sort of mental fugue state, similar to the reader's dreams. The couple that has nervous breakdowns together... etc.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Thanks for sticking around!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I'm back! Sorry, again, for the short-ish chapter. I appreciate your patience and continued attention to the fic. It means so much ♥ This chapter is like, just barely beta'd and I'm sorry. Kinda just winging it here and hoping to get it finished before life kicks me in the teeth again. And I hereby solemnly swear to get this fic finished BEFORE the show ends next year (RIP).

There is steam rising through the belly of creation, the exhale exhaust of the great, dark engine that powers hell. It smells of sulfur, of burned flesh, and, sometimes, strangely, of the freshly open roses in the French countryside.

There’s nothing hellish about a rose, nor France, nor a countryside. Even the greatest darkness in all of creation can pine for beauty, too.

As you and Meg stumbled and climbed into your car—her at the wheel, you riding shotgun while trembling from head to foot—the smell of roses flooded your nose. You paused, surprised, wanting to savor the scent.

And then Meg gagged. “Ugh. Yuck,” she groaned, fastening her seatbelt.

You did the same. “What is it?” you asked, adjusting the strap.

She twisted the key in the ignition and floored it, knocking you flush against the seat. She dovetailed swiftly, impressively, out of the parking lot and charged without delay into traffic. By some miracle, the roads were blissfully clear of cars.

“Meg?” You reached out for her shoulder, your fingers hovering over her leather jacket. The smell of roses crowded your every breath, piling perfume onto every inhale. “What’s wrong?”

“You mean that stench, or that monster we just ditched?” she sneered.

You stared at her. “Monster?”

“He was something, all right? I could just tell.”

But you weren’t ready to be convinced. “That politician guy? Dick something? That's one hell of a name."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Meg laughed.

"He _looked_ human,” you said, frowning.

Meg rolled her eyes, shook her head, and turned to stare at you.

“Watch the road!” you squeaked.

She ignored you, squeak and all. “I look human, don’t I?” she said.

“Sure, of course,” you said quickly. You would have agreed to anything she said if it made her look at the road again.

“But I’m not human—thankfully.” She turned to face front again, and you let out a breath of relief. “And neither was that Dick guy.” She paused, her cheeks hollowing as she chewed on in the inside.

“But—"

“Just trust me on this, okay?” she added, spitting the words out like bitter seeds. “If we’re gonna work together then we’re gonna have to trust each other. And that includes not putting me through an inquisition.” Meg settled into her seat with a sigh. “Man, those were the good old days.”

You did a quick scan of what little memories you had of high school history class. The Inquisition started in the _twelfth century._ Did she really live that long? Just how old _was_ Meg?

As you pondered the possible antiquity of the woman sitting next to you, as well as her role in Catholic-sanctioned atrocities, she began to hum quietly to herself, drumming her hands on the steering wheel. The further you got from the library the higher her mood climbed—and the lower yours sank. The scent of roses was still there, pushing its way into your every breath.

What the hell was going on? Why was Meg so sure that that man was something terrible and terrifying? And just what was so bad that it could scare a demon?

Before you found the nerve to ask a question, Meg took in a quick breath, scowled, and quickly rolled down her window. “You know the one thing I don’t miss about home?” she asked, arching an eyebrow as she peered over at you.

You shook your head.

“The smell. Yuck.” She threw an exaggerated shiver, so hard and fierce it made her dark hair shake. “I keep telling folks we gotta set up an air filter or round the clock Febreze spritzers, but it always gets shot down at meetings. They say it's too wasteful.”

“Meetings?” you echoed dumbly.

“Yep. We got these things called demesnes down there—sorta like some old Jane Austinian manor house estate. And every now and then when we’ve got grievances to air or bylaws to argue, we get together for a meeting. Kinda like your town halls, I guess.”

You stared at her.

“What?” she demanded with a tight little laugh. “You don’t think _you_ guys invented the rules of local government, do ya? Who do you think gave you the idea for civil service?”

“Uh, the Han dynasty?” you asked. That much you remembered at least.

“Nope,” Meg said, popping her lips on the word.

“So… who was it?”

She pointed a finger at her head. “Boom.”

“What, seriously? _You_?”

“Well okay I can’t take all the credit. I mean, I _can_ , but I shouldn’t. A good ol’ yaojing named Pipa Jing dreamed it up first, and it sounded like too good a torment to pass up. I had a lotta ambition when I was younger. We all do. But then you spend a few centuries weavin’ webs and getting people tangled up in them and it just gets so _boring_. You start to lose track of the plot. Much easier to just kick a few teeth in, break a few bones, bargain for a few souls.”

Your stomach dropped as a wave of nausea rushed through you. “Souls.”

“Yes, souls. You’ve heard of ‘em, right?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t…” You twisted your hands in your lap, picking at your fingers. “I mean, I wasn’t really sure they were… y’know, real.” You picked a piece of skin off your finger and winced. Blood rushed to the surface, dark and glittering.

Meg laughed. “Of course they’re real!” she crowed. “How else do you think hell runs, honey? Souls are our money and food and drugs—sometimes all three together. Boy that’s a rush. Even the tight-asses upstairs care about souls, though they’d deny it ‘til their halos rust.”

Your throat tightened. All the air seemed to leave the car, and you fumbled for the button that would roll down the window.

“What’s wrong? You sick?”

“I might be,” you muttered, your voice weak.

Meg shifted in her seat, clearly uncomfortable. “Well… just hold yourself together for a few more minutes. We’re almost home.”

You closed your eyes. The wind felt nice on your clammy skin, but it did nothing for the thundering of your heart.

Out of respect for your lagging spirits, Meg kept her hands steady on the wheel. She even stopped humming, and you were sorry to hear the song stop.

“… Meg?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think I have a soul?”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. “Why wouldn’t you?” she asked, clearly not looking for a reply.

You gave her one anyway. “Because of what I did. Because of what I’m doing.” You opened your eyes and leaned your head back against the headrest. No good. Your head was still spinning, your heart still pounding, and _still_ the smell of roses hadn’t faded. It was like a garden bloomed to profusion in your car, and for just a moment, just one tiny moment, you burned with fury. What was _happening_?

“I don’t think what you’re doing is wrong,” Meg said.

“But someone does. Someone more powerful than you.”

“Watch it,” she growled.

You weren’t in the mood to be bullied. “I’m serious. I had a dream or… I dunno, a vision, a something, and Lucifer thinks it was sent by an angel. A really pissed off angel who knew exactly what I was doing and wanted to stop me.”

Meg took this in for a moment. “You got all sorts of cosmic VIPs stomping around in your head, don’t ya?” She reached over to tap the side of your head, then mussed your hair. Her touch was light, almost playful. In any other situation, you’d have laughed and savored her teasing. It was almost like having a friend again.

“I’m serious,” you whined, batting her hand away.

“So am I,” she said, withdrawing her hand. “Listen, there’s nothing you’ve done that even comes _close_ to sinning, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“Oh no?” you laughed. Now it was your turn to be bitter. “I’m praying to the _devil_ , Meg. I’m praying and he answers.”

“Because he was an angel first—the brightest and the best of them. Why wouldn’t he answer you? What’s to stop him?”

Meg did not give you time to answer. “You have no idea what he’s done to himself for you, do you?" she asked, her voice hard and cruel. "You don’t have a fucking clue. He defied a curse older than your Earth just to look you in the eye and hear you speak. Every second he spent in front of you came at a cost greater than you could guess. I don’t have the words for it; I don’t even think your little brain could grasp it, even if I spent your whole little mayfly of a life explaining. The point is, you prayed, he answered—you called, and he came. And he’ll do it again when you ask, and he’ll die a little every time.”

“He can die?” you whispered. You barely had breath left to breathe, but you forced the words out all the same.

Meg shook her head and took a turn hard enough for the tires to shriek. “Not like you’re thinking. Death’s different for you. You humans don’t go on after your death. But for us—for demons, and I guess for angels too—death is something we just have to endure. Our vessels can die, but that’s no problem. Wait a few years, another one’ll pop up to fit and then we’re like Cinderella off to a ball. But there’s a vessel and then there’s what fills that vessel. There’s who we’re in and who we _are_ under it, inside it.”

A long moment of silence passed. You dared not break it, dared not question it.

In time, Meg spoke again. “So when our death happens, or one of ‘em anyway, all we can do is get up after and keep walking, keep existing. There’s probably ways to put us down for good but I don’t go looking for them. It’s too morbid, even for me.”

“That’s saying something,” you muttered.

Meg grinned. “Sure is. Now where was I? Oh, right. We die but there’s still a part of us rotting in the dirt. We die and we don’t get the luxury of staying down. We die and haunt ourselves. We’re immortal, not indestructible.”

The smell of roses swelled, oppressive and demanding. It made your nose tingle. “Do you think it’s the same for… for him?” you whispered, too ashamed to say his name.

“I… I dunno,” Meg muttered, inching to a brief pause at a Stop sign. “He's different from the rest of us. Different from his family upstairs too.” Meg’s throat tightened, and you watched as she forced a breath down and then shoved the next batch of words out. “There’s never been anyone like him in all of creation,” she said, her voice heavy with awe and grief. “No one to tell him the rules, no one to keep him company. Everything is all guess and consequence. He’s out on a wing and a prayer with all… all this,” she said, waving one hand in the air at you.

You shook your head, hoping that would scatter the tears burning in the edges of your eyes. “And I’m killing him,” you said.

“Hey, you already got one Savior that died for your sins. What’s one more?”

You didn’t laugh. It was a funny joke, all things considered, walking the line of blasphemy and comedy, but you didn’t have it in you to laugh.

“If it makes you feel any better, you obviously had no idea what you were doing. I doubt he’ll hold it against you.” Meg paused. When she spoke again, her voice was brittle. “I don’t even think he’ll hate you.”

She took a breath to steady herself. “And look, you’re not the one who came up with the idea of prayin’. If the jerks upstairs wanna point a finger at someone, it should be themselves. _They’re_ the ones who keep pushing for the _power of prayer_.” She wiggled her fingers and made a face.

“I appreciate you trying to cheer me up—” you began.

“I’m not lying to you,” Meg cut in, her tone harsh and sharp. “I wouldn’t waste the breath.”

“—but I don’t think you’re an impartial observer to the whole ‘not damned' thing,” you finished.

Meg shrugged. “Probably not, but I _am_ an expert on it. And I can tell you right now that you’re not, kiddo. Not even close.”

You wanted to believe her. More than anything you wanted what she said to be true. How nice it would be if you weren’t risking eternal damnation and the rotting of your soul on a whim, on an errant prayer. How nice it would be to know you could get through this without a scathe on something as infinitely precious and easily overlooked as your immortal goddamned soul. But no matter how much you forced the words through your thoughts, a dark trickle of doubt found its way through, haunting you, hurting you.

Questions buzzed like hornets in the hive of your mind. You felt their sting and held it in, making it your own private ache. You opened your mouth, but the question that came out was different from all the rest.

“You promise?”

Your voice was as thin as cracked glass. If you talked any louder, you would break all to pieces.

Meg said nothing for a moment. She braked at the intersection, idling at the red light. Then, slowly, carefully, as if she too thought you were little more than newly shattered glass, Meg took hold of your hand, curling her fingers under your palm. Her hand was warm, her touch unexpectedly soft.

“Look at me,” she said.

You waited until you were sure that the tears in your eyes would stay in place before you did as she demanded. You looked at her, at her round face, at her dark eyes, solemn and stern. You looked at her expression. It seemed familiar somehow, the seriousness of it, the intensity—it reminded you of Lucifer.

The thought took your breath away. You _missed_ him.

“I promise,” Meg said.

You smiled, barely, weakly.

The light turned green. You could see its faint, ghoulish glow cast a pall over Meg’s pale cheek.

Something caught your eye. You peered over Meg’s shoulder at the road that bisected the street you were on, the street that currently had a red light.

An SUV, some hulking tank of a beast made for offroads and motorcades, was speeding through the light—speeding towards you.

There was no time to do more than scream. “ _MEG!_ ”

Just one word, one precious word, even as another name burst through your brain. _Lucifer. Lucifer, Lucifer._ If this were the last seconds of your life, you wanted your dying thought to be the one name that mattered, the one that had made this happen, the one that had answered your first whimsical, desperate plea.

_Lucifer, Lucifer._

You reached out for Meg, clawing at the lapel of her jacket and tugging her close—as if that would do any good. Stupid, stupid. Glass exploded into the car, scattering like razor-studded diamonds onto your lap, tangling in Meg’s dark hair. You felt the blood on your face before you knew you were bleeding, and then you were falling, falling. The impact of the oncoming car knocked yours askew, first to the side, then _on_ its side.

You watched as the sky came into view, a mad whirl of gray clouds and tangled wires and glass, so much glass. Blood was everywhere, the smell of it, the warmth, sticking in your hair and sliding down your face. The sky disappeared, and your arms flew over your head as the car rolled onto its roof then swayed, close to tipping again, but it settled, landing onto the pavement with a loud shriek.

And then Meg became to scream. Your name, and curses, then Lucifer’s name, then yours again.

“Get out of here!” she howled. You saw her tearing at her seatbelt, then yours. She scrambled, fierce and lethal, pushing you towards your broken window. “Go!”

She shoved her hands against your arm hard enough to hurt. Your teeth rattled from the force of her shove, and you cried out in anger, in pain. Meg paused, her eyes wide with alarm—and then she slid away. Something had grabbed her legs and pulled her, screaming, cursing, from the wreckage of the car.

“Meg!” your voice was high, strained, almost inhuman.

“Just _go_!” she yelled back. “Run, get out of here! Go somewhere safe!”

Before you could move, a pair of strong, unrelenting hands grabbed you by your hair and your wrist. You fought feebly, hopelessly, but were still dragged from the car and lifted up. Your dangled in the air, the toes of your boots just barely scraping the glass-covered pavement. Your felt your wrist crack.

"Gotcha," a low voice hissed, menacing and proud. Your eyes were too tear-blind and bloody to see its face, but it sounded like a man.

You closed your eyes and prayed. Teeth bared and mouth thick with blood, you prayed. _Die. Whoever you are, whoever’s got me, I want you to die. I want the light to leave your eyes, and I want you dead, I want you to drop fucking dea—_

The man groaned once, a low murmur cut short. And then you were falling, crashing hard into the pavement, bare hands sliding on the shattered glass. More blood shed, more aches, more pain. You couldn’t think about that now.

 _Run,_ Meg had said. _Get out of here. Go somewhere safe._

Somewhere safe. Safe.

Safe.

You almost wanted to laugh. Where the hell would that be? Home? Not likely. Whoever was after you, hurting you, and currently fighting Meg—and losing by the sound of it—would just follow you there.

So if not home, then where? You had no friends nearby. And even if you did, could you really risk bringing them into all of _this_?

Somewhere safe. Safe.

You forced yourself to your feet, sobbing against the pain and fear. Without looking at the man, the _dead_ man, laying at your feet, you stumbled more than once, then that stumble became a limp, became a sprint. Breathless, you ran off the road and into the dark shrouded wood that lined it. You had a vague idea of where you were—sixteen blocks from home, in the small woods that surrounded Lake Sans Souci. It didn't matter that you didn't know where to go. All you had to do was run.

A piercing metallic shriek split the air. It came from behind you. You paused, catching your hands on a moss-soft tree trunk. Faintly, if you held your breath and strained your hearing, you heard Meg’s voice, triumphant and vicious.

 _Run_ she had said—and that’s just what you did.

Safe. Safe. Safe. The word hammered in your head, turning the word into a nail that refused to stay down. Safe. Safe. _Home._

When had you last felt safe? When was the very last time in your life that you felt truly safe and protected, loved, comforted?

The answer came to you as you reached a clearing in the woods. You tilted your eyes to the overcast sky. The rain stopped—when did it stop? Where had the thunder gone? No, that didn’t matter. Don’t think about that now. Think about running, about safety. Think about home.

Home.

Your throat was scraped raw by ragged breathing and screaming. Every breath tasted of blood.

“Mom,” you rasped. _Safe_ your mind throbbed. “I wanna see my mom.”

You closed your eyes, your tears mingling with the blood half-dried on your cheeks. “Let me see my mom,” you hissed, praying, demanding.

“I wanna see Mom.” You stumbled blindly onward, your hands outstretched to catch you if you fell. It was a foolish thing, really. Childish, frightened. You weren’t sure if the prayer would work if your eyes were open. Even as a child you made your wishes with your eyes closed tight, as if the darkness could grant the want crying out in your heart.

“Mom. Mom.” The word itself became a prayer, a plea. Mother might be the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children, but you knew God wouldn’t help you here. He hadn’t before, so why should he start now?

Something hard thumped into your stomach, making you gasp. You opened your eyes, your hands falling down to grip a familiar white picket fence.

You looked up, hardly daring to believe it.

In front of you stretched a familiar blue gravel-lined drive, leading to a familiar porch wrapped around a familiar coffee-brown house. You had just enough time to see the red door and the lemon tree in the yard before the tears filled your eyes again, flooding you, blinding you.

“Mom.” The word was a cry now, desperate and demanding. You shoved the gate open and limped up the drive. Pebbles scattered with your every stumbling step. You clutched your right arm to your chest, half certain the wrist was broken. Every step you took made your left ankle throb in waves of pain, eager for your attention. You were almost crawling by the time you made it to the porch, on hands and knees, an infant again, an infant with only one word on your lips. “Mom. Mom!”

You wrenched yourself to your feet, leaning your full weight against the front door. It was locked.

With a whimper, you flattened your hands on the glass, leaving a small bloody print behind. “Mom! Mommy, let me in! It’s me!”

 _Run,_ Meg had said. _Somewhere safe_ , you had prayed. And where better than your home—who better than your mother?

A tall shadow filled the glass, hidden by the lace curtain. You held your breath, shaking with a silent sob. You stepped back, willing yourself to stand, demanding that you look your mother in the eye. You dragged your knuckles over your eyes, scattering your tears, smearing your blood.

The door opened, and you stared into the face of a woman you didn't know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> drop me a line @ softspokensansa on tumblr if you ever wanna chat/yell at me to continue the fic at a somewhat normal schedule!!


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